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

by Deborah M. Anapol

  Two and a half years ago, they met Laurel, who had recently moved to Spain from France, through the polyamory network Juliette had started. Roland and Laurel were six months into their love affair when Laurel accidentally got pregnant. Roland was apprehensive about Juliette’s reaction to the news, but, as it turned out, she was just as delighted as the other two, perhaps because after some experience with medical interventions for infertility, she recognized this as an opportunity to bring a baby into their lives in a less expensive and more enjoyable way. They quickly decided that they all wanted to raise this baby and moved in together a few months before Maya was born. Juliette says they all get along very harmoniously and take an equal share in the parenting responsibilities. In a recent newspaper interview, Laurel attributed their success to good communication.

  I spoke with Juliette and Roland via Skype at their Barcelona home recently, and they told me that “it’s amazing how not different it is raising a baby in a triad.” Of course, they’ve never raised a baby any other way so probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them how much easier it can be to have an “extra” adult in the house, but they did say they’re happy to find it’s getting less demanding now that Maya is beyond infancy. Roland says the hardest part was having virtually no time for himself while juggling a job, a baby, and two women. This triad believes in being open to the flow and is currently considering adding Laurel’s new boyfriend, who lives in Amsterdam, to the family. Their only agreement, apart from honesty with each other, is that they’ll wait six months to a year, until the new relationship energy has worn off with a new lover before making any big decisions about the future. Roland emphasizes that he is heterosexual, so, while he prefers to have friendship and mutual respect with his partners’ lovers, he’s not looking for sexual intimacy with a man. Rather, they “must respect and treat my partners well. I’ve had to hold my tongue at times with men I didn’t like being around and didn’t think were treating Juliette well, but eventually it didn’t work out with them anyway. I try to allow the women to discover this themselves, and I hope to do the same with my daughter when she grows up. People need to be allowed to find things out for themselves and not be told what to do.”

  Roland is as surprised as anyone to find himself “married” to two women. He always assumed he’d be sharing Juliette with another man instead of vice versa. “I’ve only been with three women in my life,” he says, “and I’m still with two of them, whereas Juliette has had a number of boyfriends.” Roland says he always believed women can have multiple loves, but he really wasn’t that interested in finding another woman for himself. It just happened.

  When I asked Roland how he escaped the usual male programming, he immediately pointed to his cross-cultural background. “Moving from country to country as a child, I never felt the kind of peer pressure that what society and friends are telling you is what you have to do,” he explains. “I had few friends and was always an outsider socially.” Roland also feels that his birth order, being the middle child of three, meant that from the very beginning of his life, he was accustomed to sharing the love of his parents with siblings, so he’s comfortable with not being the center of attention and knows there’s always enough love to go around. Roland also mentioned the Christian values he was raised with, especially Christ’s emphasis on unconditional love, as an important influence.

  As foreigners in Spain—both Juliette and Laurel are Americans, and Roland is British but lived in Africa, Colombia, and Mexico before his family moved to the United States when he was a teen—they feel graced with a freedom from social norms that the Spaniards might hesitate to extend to their own kin. They’re close friends with another polyamorous family who live nearby but are originally from Germany. In terms of the reactions of their own families, Juliette tells me that Roland’s family has been the most supportive, and this was a big surprise to them because his parents are quite religious. As mainstream Methodists, they’ve apparently taken to heart the teachings of Jesus. Both Juliette’s and Laurel’s parents are divorced and not very happy about the situation, but their mothers seem to be getting over their original upset.

  Roland and Juliette bristle a bit when I ask if they’ve thought about what they would do about custody in the event of a breakup. “Couples don’t usually think about future breakups when they have children, and we don’t either,” they retort. “I have less fear in my heart about this than the standard monogamous couple. I’m not really worried about it,” Roland continues, clearly finding it tedious that everyone asks this question, but he relents and says, “We’d move, to another country if necessary, to be close enough to continue having a relationship with Maya.”

  Kamala and Michael, whom we first met in chapter 2, live in suburban San Diego with their son, Devon, and with Michael’s dad. Ever since Devon was born three years ago, Kamala has been hosting poly potlucks and other workshops and social events at their home. I first met Kamala about ten years ago when she was a popular “hot bi babe” in the growing San Diego poly community. Kamala is a slender, high-energy woman who seems to juggle her family, numerous lovers, and a booming business with ease. When I asked her to tell me what life is like for her as a polyamorous mom, she readily agreed. Kamala enthusiastically described how thrilled Devon is to welcome both old and new friends and lovers, whom she introduces to him as “auntie” or “uncle,” into their home. He often becomes the “doorman” at events like the monthly poly potluck, running to answer the doorbell for arriving guests, all of whom know him and greet him warmly.

  Devon is usually the only child in this sea of loving adults, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He happily takes his place in the introduction circle where people say their names and are asked to name a flower that expresses how they’re feeling. It’s rare for other children to attend these events, although Kamala says she doesn’t discourage it. Kamala proudly relates how Devon, who is barely three, understands the game and shouts “Daisy!” when it’s his turn. After dinner when the group discussion gets deeper, Devon goes off to spend time with Grandpa, who is the “nighttime nanny” after the full-time nanny goes home for the evening. “The reason we don’t include Devon is not because of the content,” Kamala says, “but because of his attention span.” Kamala reports that Michael’s dad is very liberal and has no gripe with their lifestyle, although he has suggested that as Devon gets older, they should put an addition onto their suburban San Diego house to allow him more space from the hubbub.

  At three, Devon is too young for much in the way of verbal explanation of a poly lifestyle, but he loves to watch the recorded television spots of Mom and Dad discussing polyamory because he’s in some of them. Kamala recalls that he has asked questions when he happens on Mom or Dad engaged with another partner but usually takes it in stride. For example, when he’s entered their bedroom while she’s with another lover, he might ask, “Where’s Dad?” And Kamala will matter-of-factly respond, “He’s in the other room with Auntie June.” Between them, Kamala and Michael have about ten other lovers, and Kamala is gratified to find that “their love for me spills over to my son.”

  While their lifestyle no doubt sounds outrageous to many people, Kamala is very public about her life and often appears on television talk shows along with various intimate friends. She says she’s unconcerned about the possibility of government interference because there’s no one in their families or social circle who would make a complaint and Devon is so obviously a happy and healthy child. She says they own their home, pay their taxes, and just don’t anticipate any problems. However, Kamala reports that many of the critical comments on her blog do concern children. After her appearance on the Tyra Banks Show, a woman wrote that “with all these sex addicts coming in and out of your house, how long do you think it will be before someone molests your child?” Kamala was genuinely shocked by this comment, telling me, “I’d be much more concerned in a community where people are not bringing so much light and healing to their sexuality as we do here.”


  CUSTODY ISSUES

  Although it’s quite rare, there have been some well-publicized cases in the United States in which poly families or communities have had their children taken away either temporarily or permanently, but even a temporary issue can have long-term repercussions. When I asked Roland and Juliette, the expatriates living in Spain, whether they had any concerns about losing custody of their child after being so public about their triadic parenting, they were shocked. Roland explained, “Because of the recency of the Franco regime, there’s still a sense of quiet rebellion about the government interfering in people’s private lives, and the government knows this too. It’s inconceivable that the government would come in and take a child just because the parents were polyamorous.”

  But in 1998 in Memphis, Tennessee, that’s exactly what happened. April, Shane, and Chris were a happy triad, all in their twenties, who were raising April’s preschooler from a previous relationship. April and Shane were legally married and living with April’s additional male partner Chris when the threesome agreed to appear on MTV’s Sex in the ’90s series. The child’s Christian grandmother was outraged by their polyamorous (and pagan) lifestyle, and a judge ordered that the child be removed from her stay-at-home mother’s home and put in custody of the grandmother. The legal battle went on for two years, with Chris moving out in an effort to convince authorities to allow the child to return to her mother. Despite the testimony of four different court-appointed experts who concluded that the girl belonged with her mother and an appeal by April’s attorney on constitutional grounds, the Tennesse judge refused to rule in her favor. April eventually declared herself “unfit” due to poverty and let the grandmother keep the child.

  In a more recent custody case, another Tennessee mother was at risk of losing custody of her ten-year-old child, but with the help of the Sexual Freedom League Defense Fund, she got her daughter back without having to leave her triad. The Defense Fund’s website9 has some useful advice for people contemplating polyamorous parenthood, which includes such considerations as deciding who will be listed as parents on the birth certificate, voluntary guardianship (which adds legal guardians without displacing biological parents), estate planning, medical insurance, and custody, property, and visitation agreements in the event of “divorce.”

  The Washington, D.C.–based polyamorous community known as the Finders lost custody of their children in 1987 but only temporarily in this extraordinarily bizarre case. However, the sensational newspaper coverage, filled with lurid but contrived accusations that they were a satanic cult, along with rumors of involvement by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), soon led to the demise of the entire community, which had been active for several decades. My friend Michael, who is now in his forties, joined the community right out of high school in the late 1970s and was at the center of the controversy.

  As a young man, Michael was attracted to the group by its charismatic leader who became a father figure for him and also by the group’s philosophy, which he perceived as doing everything the reverse of the way it was done in the mainstream because clearly the “normal” way of doing things didn’t work very well. Michael’s parents had tried having an open marriage as part of their human potential explorations in the 1970s but, like many couples in that era, ended up getting divorced. Both parents were too absorbed by their own dilemmas to pay much attention to their children. Michael describes his father as a pot-smoking womanizer and his mother as withdrawn and less available than Michael would have liked. As a self-described nerdy teenager, handsome but too shy and intellectual to be popular with girls, Michael had a difficult adolescence. He was disillusioned both with the mainstream society and by what he’d seen of the “ESThole’s” way of managing relationships.

  As Michael describes it, “The idea behind the Finders was to share everything—money, clothes, food, and also sex partners. It wasn’t polyamory as I think of it now because we were not necessarily drawn to each other; we were drawn to the leader who would orchestrate different games.”

  The number of adults in the group ranged from about ten to twenty during Michael’s years there. All were white and mostly well-educated professionals between twenty and forty-something years old. There were a total of seven children, all except one of whom were born in the community. Michael recalls that “one day the leader would tell all the women to pick a man, get married, and have children. Another day he might tell everyone to get divorced.” Sometimes he would wake them up in the middle of the night and send them on a “mission,” so they learned to always keep a suitcase packed with essentials. Michael remembers that “everything was always changing, and it was fun for the adults, but in retrospect I think it was confusing for the children. It was one of these spontaneous, midnight directives which instructed all the women to fly to California and the men to drive there in two vans with the six children. We were all to rendezvous in California, but along the way we stopped in Florida.”

  One day, Michael and another man were in a public playground with six scruffy-looking children, only one of whom was his biological child, when they attracted the attention of the police, who suspected a kidnapping or worse. Six children with two women probably would not have been a remarkable sight, but the police took the two men into custody and placed the children in foster care. After forty days in the county jail, all charges were dropped and the men released, but meanwhile the case had made national headlines, and the children were fairly traumatized.

  In a rare 1998 interview,10 founder Marion Petty, who died not long after giving the interview, said that he began to keep “open house” in the 1930s and over the years hosted many well-known counterculture figures as well as a handful of followers who were with him for over twenty-five years. He acknowledged that he did have CIA contacts during World War II and that his wife later worked as an administrator for the CIA but denied that his CIA connections explain why the case against Michael was dropped and the children returned to their parents.

  The whole truth may never be known, but Michael, who I’ve known well for over a decade, says that the case was fabricated in typical tabloid fashion even though it was reported by respectable daily papers. For example, pictures of white-clothed “satanic rituals” were from a Halloween party, nudity was just part of their lifestyle and had nothing to do with pedophilia, and sacrificial animals were part of an educational project to teach the children about raising animals for food. The whole case is one of the strangest ever to make the news and has given conspiracy buffs on both sides of the fence plenty of ammunition, but I tend to believe Michael when he says that while the Finders was surely a cult—and a polyamorous one at that—there was no child abuse or buying and selling of children involved. As for the CIA, who knows?

  Most of the members left the community in the aftermath of the scandal. One former member who had no children of his own but became a kind of surrogate father to them all still keeps an “open house” in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the grown children often visit him. Now young adults, they seem to have emerged no more scathed than your average twenty-something-year-old. Michael’s own son, now twenty-four, graduated from college with a major in theater and currently works as a substitute teacher in an inner-city school system. Michael says that one boy who had the most challenging time in a series of foster homes ended up joining the military and is now serving in Iraq. To Michael, this is a failure, but for many Americans, it’s something to be proud of.

  While the simple fact of polyamory can be alarming to those raised to believe in monogamy, polyamorous communities with children can easily be seen as an even bigger threat to society. Even though few have been as controversial as the Finders, these communities sometimes have challenges interfacing with the outside world, but still the children seem to do at least as well as those in the average nuclear family.

  CHILDREN IN POLYAMOROUS COMMUNITIES

  The ZEGG community relocated from the Black Forest to Belzig, Germany, in 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down
and a former Stasi camp in what had been East Germany became available at a very reasonable price. We’ll discuss this community in more detail in chapter 9, but for now let’s just say that it was founded on the premise that “a free society needs free love,” which is one of their popular slogans. Currently, there are about fifteen children living at ZEGG, while an earlier generation of young people who were raised there are now in their twenties and off on their journeys into adulthood. Ina, who has been part of ZEGG from the beginning, told me that this first group of children lived together in the Children’s House when they were in their teens, much like the children of the Osho ashram. There were four or five of them, she recalls, and they were very physically affectionate together, snuggling and touching a lot but not having sex with each other. In fact, Ina tells me that they all chose not to become fully sexual at all until their late teens. The group is still quite close, like brothers and sisters, and stay in touch via Facebook and instant messaging. Some are now at the university or working in Berlin, which is only an hour away, so they often come to visit. Others have gone to live at ZEGG’s sister community of Tamera in Portugal and have children of their own

  The children now at ZEGG don’t live separately from the adults but meet daily at the children’s house after school and sometimes on Saturdays and usually have lunch there as well. The house and adult staff are provided by the community who feel it’s important that the children be supported to build their own community. The parents at ZEGG also have a close community with each other and support each other in being parents.