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

by Deborah M. Anapol

  Have you ever had more than one lover or boyfriend or girlfriend at a time?

  Have you heard of polyamory? What does it mean to you?

  Do you consider yourself polyamorous?

  How do you feel about polyamory?

  Have you ever told anyone you were nonmonogamous?

  If yes, what exactly did you say, and how did they respond? Who else have you told? Why?

  When did you first meet someone who was poly?

  Next, review the people who are either partners or potential partners and ask the following questions:

  How honest have I been about my romantic and sexual desires, encoun ters, fantasies, and conflicts with person x, y, and z? (don’t forget to include yourself)

  How honest do I want to be with person x, y, and z?

  How risky does it feel to be more honest with person x, y, and z?

  If it becomes clear that a person is not monogamous but feels that it’s too risky to let anyone know that one is poly, one probably still feels that he or she is doing something wrong. My recommendation would be to find a support group or an open-minded therapist to explore some of these issues. If this is not possible, starting a journal where private feelings and experiences can be recorded is a good alternative. Talking to strangers or new acquaintances can also provide an opportunity to try being more honest with people where there is little risk involved.

  Twenty-five years ago, following the publication of my first book on polyamory, television producers started calling me with requests to appear on various talk shows. They usually wanted me to bring a husband or lover or three, and they often asked me to help them find other polyamorous families to fill out the show. I found that my own and others’ coming-out issues were quickly elicited by the prospect of discussing our relationships on national television. In those days, it took a very confident or very naive person to expose their intimate lives to television hosts and audiences who were often critical, judgmental, and downright hostile.

  While most people found this prospect too daunting to seriously consider doing it, thinking and talking about it turned out to be an excellent window into coming-out issues. I created the following exercise for people attending my seminars on polyamory and called it “Shine the Light of Television into Your Closet.” Imagine that you’ve just received a phone call from the producers of a national talk show. They want to know if you’ll appear as a guest to talk about your nonmonogamous lovestyle. “And could you bring any of your lovers with you?” they ask. You take a deep breath and tell them you’ll have to think about it. They say they’ll get back to you in a few days.

  Now ask yourself the following questions: What is your greatest fear about appearing on this talk show? What questions might be asked that you wouldn’t want to answer on national television? What would be hard to explain? What might you feel embarrassed or ashamed about? What would you be most proud of? Who would or would not be willing to accompany you? Who would you be afraid would see you? What would you not want them to find out about you? What consequences (negative or positive) might result from your appearance on the show?

  Try to write down at least some of your answers. Now ask yourself the following: What would have to change in your life for you to feel comfortable appearing on this TV show? What would be the easiest to change? The hardest?

  Another good coming-out exercise is to write a coming-out letter. Here is one suggested format. Choose someone from your cast of characters to whom you would like to but have not yet come out. If possible, choose a pivotal person, such as a lover, parent, or close friend. Then begin by telling this person about your positive feelings toward him or her. Express how much you value your relationship with him or her and offer appreciation for his or her contributions to your life. If you’re writing to someone whom you have mixed feelings toward or who you feel has wronged you or misunderstood you in the past, such as a parent or ex-spouse, be careful not to blame or judge him or her for what he or she has done. Instead, tell him or her about the hurt that you’ve felt and how you’ve tried to protect yourself from feeling that hurt. Then share whatever you can about being nonmonogamous and proud. If you know that the person you’re writing to is an ardent monogamist, be sure to emphasize that you respect his or her choices and you’d like him or her to respect yours. If you feel ready to take the risk, mail the letter. If you don’t, ask yourself this: What might I gain from sharing this letter? What might I lose?

  WHEN SOMEONE YOU KNOW COMES OUT POLY

  If someone you know tells you that he or she is poly, it’s best to be honest about your response, whatever that may be. Using “I” statements is a good way to frankly make your feelings known without judging or attacking. For example, you could say, “I notice that I felt anxious when you said you have another partner.” Or, “I’m feeling angry you didn’t tell me this before.” Or, “I’m so relieved! I was wondering if you would reject me if I told you that I’ve never been monogamous.” If you’re curious and want to hear more about it or if you have relevant experiences of your own, that can be part of the conversation too, but it’s a good idea to check in with yourself and see if there are any unexpressed emotional reactions first. On the other hand, it’s fine to set your own boundaries and say that you need some time to process what you’ve heard and that you don’t want to discuss it just yet.

  Remember that whomever you’re talking with may be nervous or even terrified about how you’ll react, especially if it’s someone close to you. They may interpret a remark such as “That explains a lot” in a negative way even if you didn’t mean it as a judgment. Starting with an appreciation, such as “Thank you for trusting me with this information” or “I’m happy we’re getting to know each other better,” can be a good way to offer reassurance that you’re not planning an attack.

  POLYAMORY AND THE LAW

  While many Middle Eastern, Asian, and African nations still permit men to marry more than one woman, Western countries consider a legal marriage to more than one person at a time to constitute the crime of bigamy (although exceptions are made in some countries for immigrants from polygamous cultures). In North America, most of the twenty-first-century legal action affecting polys seems to be surfacing in Canada rather than the United States. In 2005, the Canadian government appointed a commission to investigate the status of immigrant women and children who came to Canada as part of polygamous families. Several papers were published, but no legal changes were enacted.

  Muslims have long argued that plural marriage provides more protection to women than the Western custom of keeping mistresses. Betsy’s story illustrates the veracity of the Muslim position as well as the reality that legal protections can always be circumvented. Betsy, an attractive redhead in her late forties, has been in relationship with Terry, who’s in his late fifties, for over ten years. Both are divorced with grown children from their previous marriages. They lived together briefly earlier on, but Terry prefers to maintain separate households although his huge estate is usually half empty. He gives Betsy a monthly allowance and pays for their frequent vacations as well as other “extras” that she wouldn’t be able to afford on her part-time yoga teacher salary. Betsy, who has identified as bisexual and nonmonogamous since she was a teenager, is challenged by Terry’s refusal to openly communicate about his other girlfriends. “I don’t know what he expects me to think when I find another woman’s lingerie in his closet,” she says. “It’s obvious there’s another woman, but he refuses to discuss it. It annoys me that he won’t be honest with me, but otherwise it’s not a problem, except when I feel he’s neglecting me, which does happen from time to time. Like any relationship, ours ebbs and flows, but because he won’t tell me what’s going on with him, I never know if it’s a new woman or if his family is making more demands on him or he just needs some downtime.”

  Betsy usually responds to Terry’s occasional distancing by deciding to find another partner who will be more consistently available and willing to talk honestly
about other love interests, but she’s never found anyone she likes better than Terry. Terry objects to her having other lovers, but Betsy always argues that if he can do it, she can too. Once he threatened to cut off her allowance but relented when she refused to give in. Despite these difficulties, Betsy and Terry continue to keep choosing each other. There are no legal obstacles to their getting married, but Terry prefers to keep Betsy in the mistress role. Betsy worries that without any legal guarantees, she won’t be provided for as a wife would be if Terry were to die before her but shrugs and says, “It’s about love, not money.”

  In the United States, renegade Mormons who never relinquished their polygamous customs periodically surface and sometimes face legal action for tax evasion or child abuse and statutory rape when underage wives are involved but otherwise continue to live undisturbed as they always have. But in British Columbia, Canada, where a case against renegade Mormon polygamists was dismissed on a technicality in 2009, a ruling is being sought as to whether Canadian laws prohibiting polygamy are legal.

  The poly community is following this case closely because it could set a precedent one way or the other not only on plural marriage but also on the ability of more than two polyamorous people to live together even if they don’t call it a marriage. The same law that prohibits patriarchal polygamy also makes it a crime, punishable by five years in prison, to conduct—or even attend—a ceremony sanctioning a multipartner union even if there is no attempt at a legal marriage. Although parts of this nearly forgotten nineteenth-century law are in violation of Canada’s newer Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the desire to punish the allegedly child and woman–abusing Mormon polygamist cult leaders seems to be overriding concerns about freedom—but not in the Canadian polyamory community, where organizers are seeking “intervenors” (polyamorous people willing to swear an affidavit in court) to testify that the nineteenth-century law is unconstitutional and should be struck down.

  While it seems unlikely that the law will be used to prosecute polyamorists who are otherwise good citizens, gay activists warn that test cases do matter. There are many outmoded laws still on the books in countries all over the globe. In the United States, as in most places, such laws are rarely enforced, but their presence can add an additional layer of fear, guilt, and shame that discourages people from coming out.

  The Canadian polyamory community recognizes that this high-profile legal case presents an opportunity to educate people about the difference between patriarchal polygamy and polyamory as well as the rather remote possibility of legalizing group marriage in Canada, but in order to do so, they need to find credible intervenors giving details of their loving, committed, consensual live-in relationships involving more than two adults and willing to have their names, addresses, and other information made public and possibly reported on in the newspapers. Perhaps changing an antiquated law is a better reason to come out than entertaining television viewers, but there is no way around the coming-out challenges associated with volunteering for this task.

  I don’t think the question has ever been posed to the poly community in a systematic way, but, while 72 percent of the poly people surveyed by Loving More magazine said that they supported “multiple marriage,” in my experience the reality is that the vast majority of polyamorous people don’t want to be married—legally or not—to more than one person at a time. Only 3 percent of those surveyed indicated that they were in a group marriage, and more than half were not married at all. This is a reflection primarily of the greater popularity of couple-oriented open marriage within the poly community but also the overall increase in unmarried but cohabiting couples in society at large as well as the sentiment that “the state” has no business involving itself in people’s private lives.

  However, some people feel that legalizing group marriage would be one way to demonstrate that polyamory has the “social seal of approval” as well as providing legal rights to health care, insurance, housing, tax benefits, child custody, inheritance, and other privileges normally associated with marriage. In a practical sense, all these legal considerations can be addressed without benefit of a marriage contract, either through a corporate vehicle or by individual contracts. Valerie White, a polyamorous attorney who directs the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, advises polyamorous partners on how to protect themselves within the existing legal framework. Although the center does provide some pro bono counsel, especially for poly parents with custody issues, leaving it to the individual to draft his or her own customized contracts means that polys who are low income and/or less educated have less access to legal protection.

  Six states in the United States now recognize same-gender marriage, as do some European countries. Many municipalities have adopted “domestic partners” regulations that allow any two people who share a domicile and income share, for a specified length of time, access to the same benefits given to spouses, but resistance to allowing more than two domestic partners to register together seems just as high as expanding the definition of marriage to include polyamorous as well as same-gender unions. Tampering with the current “one man, one woman” definition of marriage triggers incredibly strong emotional reactions, particularly among conservative Christians, who have demonstrated political clout well beyond their numbers. However, polls show that age is strongly related to people’s positions on marriage, and as the twenty-first century progresses, marriage laws may well come up for review, and some poly activists are preparing for this eventuality.

  Sina Pichler is a graduate student at the University of Vienna in Austria, where she is conducting research on polyamory for her thesis. She’s been closely following the ongoing discussion among poly activists concerning legalizing polyamorous marriage. Many feel that new marital legislation should be globalized rather than left to states or nations in keeping with the spirit of today’s global village. Some of the debate centers on the relative merits of allowing a form of marriage that she calls “all-with-all,” in which three or more people are joined together at the same time within a single marriage, versus “dyadic networks,” in which existing laws against bigamy are revised so that people can be concurrently married more than once, provided that each new marriage is preceded by notification to existing spouse(s) of the pending new marriage.

  Pichler favors the “dyad network” version of plural marriage on the grounds that it minimizes changes to the existing system while providing access to marriage for a variety of poly families, including those situations that the all-with-all model doesn’t address. She points out that in most multiple-partner relationships, all partners don’t marry at once, and in the “V” or “N” structures, all the partners may not even be connected to each other. (In a V, Susie may be “married” to Hank and Isaac, but Isaac is not “married” to Hank. In an N, Susie may be “married” to Hank and Isaac, and then Isaac may “marry” Chris.) The dyad network also has advantages in the event of divorce, where one dyad can split up while leaving the rest of the connections intact.

  In addition, Pichler argues that the all-with-all model is too limiting since its size cannot exceed the number of individuals who have a “meeting of mind.” The molecular-building-block nature of the dyad network means that its size is virtually unlimited. In theory, “every adult on earth” could be joined together into one enormous dyadic network.

  I doubt that the full vision will be implemented anytime soon, but it’s a good example of the creative thinking of polyamorous people. Perhaps legalizing a simple triadic marriage, even if it includes two same-gender partners, would be the conservative way to go.

  CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

  I first realized just how international polyamory was becoming when I offered a seminar in Greece in the fall of 2003. Around this time I also started getting phone calls from British and French television producers who were hoping I could find them some American polyamorous families willing to appear in their documentary projects. The occasional Brit or European had been making the
long transatlantic flight to attend various workshops I facilitated for years, but offering a weeklong seminar on the European continent created a mini–United Nations. Half the group was made up of Americans and Canadians, but a total of twelve nationalities were represented—a lot considering that we had fewer than twenty participants. We had an Italian professor from Rome, an Indian stockbroker from Bombay, a British computer programmer, an Egyptian scientist, a French musician, an Iranian doctor, and a Catholic couple from the Netherlands who had left their two children at home in the care of another couple with whom they were intimate.

  Instead of holding the seminar at the Findhorn-inspired retreat center of Kalikos in the north of Greece as planned, a last-minute venue change landed us on the island of Lesvos in a lovely villa overlooking the Aegean Sea and a short walk from an ancient bathhouse where hot springs bubbled into a cavelike enclosure over a stone soaking pool as well as into the pebbly seashore outside. Lesvos, the birthplace of the famous bisexual, polyamorous fifth-century B.C. poet Sappho, turned out to be the perfect place to begin my exploration of polyamory around the world. Sappho is revered by lesbians the world over, and her home (sometimes spelled “Lesbos”) has even lent its name to identify women who love women and is a major pilgrimage site for lesbians today. While much of Sappho’s exquisite poetry and the details of her life have been lost, she could just as easily be seen as an illustrious ancestor for polys as for lesbians since she apparently had relationships with both genders. In any case, the ancient Greeks were a sex-positive people well into recorded history, as is evident from classical-era art and matriarchal myth, and despite the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church, this can be felt even now in the relaxed attitudes toward nudity and exuberant enjoyment of life still evident there today.