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

by Deborah M. Anapol

  Andie says that in Sweden, the poly movement has pretty much been incorporated into the Gay Pride movement and usually operates the same way. That is, they try to claim that “we’re just like you normal people, only with more partners” and try to differentiate poly from the views of it as swinging or cheating. While monogamy is still the norm for Swedes and “mild prejudice” against polyamory still exists, most people consider it not a “super big deal” but rather a personal choice, much like in the more liberal areas of the United States. Andie found that in Sweden, polyamory was strongly linked with the bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadomasochism community as well. Not surprisingly, power games are not a surefire way to warm the heart of an anarchist. For Andie, the polyamory community has “too many outdated values about gender, sexuality, power, and love and is too focused on definitions and rules and making new mental institutions for managing love relationships with several people instead of just one. Since I was interested in escaping the idea that love needed rules and institutions to survive, I never felt much at home,” she says.

  Andie summarizes her position as follows: “I felt a need to put another piece on the table, so that the scale of possible relationships choices didn’t just go between monogamous to polyamorous but had a third, outer point—relationship anarchy. This is how I see the scale these days. Monogamy says love is only for two people; everyone knows the drill. Polyamory says love relationships can be between several people in various configurations, but there is still a difference between those who are ‘partners’ in various ways and those who are not. Relationship anarchy says the gray scale between love and friendship is so gray that we cannot draw a line, and thus we shouldn’t institutionalize a difference between partners and nonpartners.”

  She realizes that from a monogamous worldview, polyamory looks no different from relationship anarchy, but to a relationship anarchist, the question “how many partners do you have?” makes no sense and is actually offensive. “The term is meant to put a useful label on an attitude that I feel is different enough from the mainstream polyamory that deals a lot with defining things like primary partners, jealousy and time management, and so on to deserve its own term,” she concludes.

  I’m not sure if I just happened to stumble into a bunch of anarchists in the United Kingdom coincidentally or if this emphasis on letting love flow and not making so many hierarchical distinctions between “partners,” “lovers,” and “friends,” not to mention primaries and secondaries, is currently radiating out from Britain. In any case, this brand of polyamory is much closer to what I had in mind twenty-five years ago when I first started writing about nonmonogamy but has since been eclipsed by what radical young people are now calling “mainstream polyamory”

  AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

  Australia and New Zealand, like Hawaii, and a few remaining isolated places in North America, as well as Central and South America and Asia, have more recently established dominant modern cultures existing in tandem with the original, so-called primitive indigenous people who’ve occupied these lands for millennia. As can be seen in the beautiful film Ten Canoes, the aboriginal people of Australia and New Zealand, like those of the Amazon River basin, many parts of Africa, and other remote places around the world, still have living traditions of various forms of nonmonogamy.16 Perhaps this accounts in part for the relatively early appearance of a polyamory movement in Australia and New Zealand, largely modeled on that in the United States. While the movement is still small and struggling, it’s been visible since the early 1980s and is quite well organized.

  When I put out a request for information on polyamory in Australia and New Zealand, nearly a dozen leaders and organizers responded with detailed information on the histories of their local support groups in the big cities of Australia and more rural areas of New Zealand. My impression is that in Australia, poly people are still trying to find each other. The numbers are still small enough that they’re quite warm and accepting of everyone. In the United States, at least in major metropolitan areas, people have long since found each other, and now they’re either just living their lives outside of any identified polyamorous community or fighting about who has the one true poly way.

  Anne, who runs a local polyamory group in one of Australia’s bigger cities, provides a good example of the way that many Australians have been isolated from a larger community or movement and had to figure out polyamory on their own, much the way things were in the United States in the 1980s when I first started organizing. Anne says that she fell in love with her current partner over twenty years ago, when he was married with children. They were both deeply religious Christians at the time. She explains, “We didn’t have a sexual affair, but the emotional connection was overwhelmingly strong. On the advice of his minister, we stopped having anything to do with each other, and I married on the rebound. If willpower could have changed how I felt for him, I would have done it. However, over the next five years, we kept running into each other, and the feelings rekindled. We tried everything in our power to manage our feelings within the context of our marriages, but the strength of our emotional connection to each other continued to outweigh our connection to our spouses. It felt like an emotional affair, even though we were as honest with our spouses as we could be.

  “Eventually our marriages broke up, and we got together. However, I didn’t want to be monogamous for a number of reasons. Integrity has always been extremely important to me, and I was horrified that I couldn’t keep my marriage vows. I never again wanted to promise anything I couldn’t guarantee I could honor. Also having been a good Christian, I hadn’t really done much sexual exploration, and I wanted the freedom to do that. But my primary reason was that I never wanted to prohibit myself or my partner from something that gave us such deep joy.

  “For the first five years, we struggled, largely on our own. We didn’t have a word for what we were doing except ‘not monogamy.’ We were very cautious about who we told. We made mistakes. My partner Pete struggled with jealousy, and I was too hard on him. I had a lot of guilt left over from my Christian days. I personally had a couple of nasty experiences of utter condemnation early on, which set me back about a year in terms of confidence and willingness to explore. At first we only knew one other couple and a couple of gay friends who were nonmonogamous. We struggled with issues that our monogamous friends couldn’t help us with. We felt like we had to ‘make it up as we went along’ to a large degree.

  “At some point an academic friend who works in a related area suggested that we might be polyamorous, and we looked it up on the Internet. It was such a relief to discover that there were others like us out there, that we weren’t completely weird or alone, that others considered it an ethical choice. Over time we connected with a few more nonmonogamous people, received more understanding from our close community, opened up to a few more people, and resolved more of our personal internal issues. Pete developed a life-partner relationship with Min, and we had some issues balancing our new V. However, I still struggled to find people who were really on my wavelength. I had a lot of experiences of monogamous people being frustrated with monogamy and trying out polyamory on me and then deciding it wasn’t for them and shutting down from me—the scary other woman.

  “I’ve been with Pete for sixteen years now, and he’s been with Min for over ten. They live together a couple of hours away from me (it’s my choice to live alone), but we stay over with each other regularly. Our triad is very stable and supportive. I have developed another life partnership, and I have some delicious lovers in my life. My poly life is as full and rich as I could ask for,” Anne concludes.

  For Anne and her family, finding community has been key to their happiness and well-being, and they were patient and mature enough to work through all the obstacles along the way. They trace their success in building community to the foundation created by American transplant Carl Turney in the 1980s, the rise of the Internet, and networking with other sexual “minoritie
s,” especially the bisexual and queer communities. The Australian media is getting increasingly interested in polyamory, but it hasn’t really hit the headlines yet, and many Australians are still completely unaware of polyamory. Australian polys are still hesitant to talk to the media because they aren’t completely “out,” and they don’t trust the “sensationalist infotainment programs,” according to Anne. Perhaps that’s why Muffy looked me up.

  Muffy is a young Australian filmmaker who graduated from film school a year ago with a major in film production. Serendipity led her to make an eight-minute documentary on polyamory for her master’s degree at film school after her original plan to do something on an African refugee fell through and she had to find another topic fast. “I saw an article in New Scientist about polyamory,” she said enthusiastically, “and it got my attention.” When she met the threesome who run the Sydney polyamory group, she knew she had something hot.

  “This is a topic everyone has an opinion about, everyone has strong reactions to it.” Muffy said that she tried to address what people are really interested in—how you make it work and how you deal with jealousy and with all the feelings that come up.

  Muffy’s student project was so successful that she got some development money from a major network to do a four-hour documentary series on polyamory, but it ended up not happening when the triad she was going to feature bailed out at the last minute and she couldn’t find a replacement. Anne says that this is because “almost every group Muffy thought was interesting had major internal shifts or breakups or dramas.” Muffy says that most of the people she’s met at the support groups are just not your “average, normal-type person—lots of bisexuals, transsexuals, bigendered . . .” she trails off. Muffy wants to make a film about a very normal young family, perhaps with children, a family who is absolutely ordinary in every way—except they’re polyamorous. She’s hoping that she can find one in the United States, where there are so many more polys. So sorry, but it’s probably hopeless, I tell her.

  “Have you considered a scripted television drama with actors?” I ask her. “I’d love to be your creative consultant!” I tell Muffy that in fact I do know some families like the one she’s fantasized about, but there’s no way they would agree to star in her television show. I try to explain to her that even in the United States, most people who are willing to come out poly on television do so because they have nothing to lose or have something to gain, even if it’s only the illusion of fame and success. But for people who already feel successful in their lives and already have “fame,” even if it’s only in their neighborhood or at their child’s school, it just isn’t very attractive to sacrifice their privacy and risk being judged or even penalized. It’s very likely that any volunteers she turns up are going to be anything but ordinary. And this seems to be the case across all the cultures I’ve investigated.

  Petula Sik Ying Ho discusses this phenomenon in her article about flamboyant young Chinese women who have leveraged their openly polyamorous lifestyle, as well as other alternative sexual practices, to create their own “charmed circles,” or high-status social standing and both financial and career rewards through a politics of iconogenesis.17 Sik describes how one women filmed herself nude and pleasuring herself while discussing an abortion and her four boyfriends. Another wrote a newspaper column disclosing the details of her polyamorous relationships—not your average Chinese girls. Options for upward mobility are fewer, and cultural restrictions on Hong Kong women are greater than in the West, so these women were taking a big risk, but they succeeded in both being effective change agents for the culture and enhancing their own life opportunities by breaking sexual and relational taboos, much like polyamorous former porn stars Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley have done in the United States. While many people continue to be concerned that coming out polyamorous will harm their careers, for at least some people it’s been an advantage. We’ll consider more weighty pros and cons for polyamory in another chapter.

  Footnotes

  *It is common among Hong Kong Chinese, especially those born after World War II, to have English nicknames by which they identify themselves, at least when interacting with English-speaking people.

  POLYAMORY IN MYTH, ARCHETYPES,

  AND HUMAN EVOLUTION

  Our culture places such a strong emphasis on monogamy as the only natural way for humans to relate that most people have tended to ignore evidence that suggests that people around the globe and throughout history had no such prejudice. While pair bonding is pervasive in many cultures and among many animal species, other configurations are also common. Myths and archetypes representing polyamorous unions and behaviors can be found all over the world, as can models from chemistry, physics, engineering, and even the Old Testament.

  The dyad has been considered the quintessential unit for sexual reproduction, although even this is put into question by contemporary studies of animal breeding behaviors. As we discussed in chapter 1, in the animal kingdom it’s sometimes the case that fertilization and optimal DNA selection are better achieved by mating with more than one partner. Meanwhile, advances in artificial reproductive technology allow single women or infertile couples to mix and match viable sperm and egg cells. As our expectations for family life shift from the bare essentials of producing offspring to fulfilling the myriad psychological and spiritual needs of highly developed human beings, the primacy of the couple is being challenged.

  There is something very special, very romantic, about the notion of two starry-eyed lovers locked in a close embrace. There is a yearning in our hearts for union with a twin soul or soul mate. But most often, the dream of happily ever after turns out to be a fantasy that is almost the polar opposite of the reality. While most of us long for that perfect mirror, few can tolerate the reflection. As Elizabeth Gilbert puts it in her popular novel Eat, Pray, Love, “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it.”1

  Many people also long for a close-knit family of spiritual partners, and this experience can be too intense for most people to tolerate as well. We yearn, too, for the balance of the triangle, the eternal triangle, which does not have to be a blueprint for tragedy any more than the story of Romeo and Juliet has to be emblematic of the tragic fate of couples. And there is something very special about the symmetry of the square, the completeness of the four elements, the four directions, the four that is twice two. There is something special about every number, and in the natural world, combinations and subgroupings of various sizes all have their unique properties and their unique places in the overall picture.

  If we insist on limiting love to two partners, we risk irreparable damage to fragile human ecosystems that thrive on diversity and complexity. Conversely, a variety of relationship niches allows everyone to find a place that fits their individual needs and desires. This kind of diversity is the hallmark of the natural world. In chemistry, elements are classified according to the number and type of bonds they will form. Imagine if the Periodic Table of the Elements was limited to hydrogen and lithium. The polyfidelitous carbon molecule would be completely out of place in an exclusively pair-bonded world.

  THE TRINITY

  As pervasive as the image of two opposite-gender partners is in our culture’s vision of perfect love and marriage, the number 3 is mythically even more basic in a universal sense. Two is the essence of a dualistic worldview, but 3 is the number of synthesis. Three is what makes the world go around—harmoniously.

  In every atom, we find the proton, or positive force; the electron, or negat
ive force; and the neutron, or synthesizing force. As our knowledge of subatomic physics gets more sophisticated, it turns out there is a whole family of other particles dancing around unseen, but these three core particles determine the qualities of the atom. In music, a chord of three notes is more dynamic and powerful than one composed of only two notes. There are three primary colors, which can be combined in various ways to make all the others. In geometry, two points define a line, but three define a plane, opening up a whole new dimension.

  The triangle was emphasized as the basic unit by Dr. Roberto Assagioli, founder of psychosynthesis, who combined Western psychoanalytic knowledge with the metaphysical teachings of Alice Bailey. Buckminster Fuller, the design genius who created the geodesic dome, also focused on the triangle, pointing out that it is the only self-stabilizing, constant pattern in the universe. Thus, it is the basis of all structural systems.

  In Hinduism, we have the Divine Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Before the Aryan invaders brought their patriarchal trinity to India, there was Kali or Durga, the Great Mother, who contained the entire trinity within her. The trident is an ancient symbol still associated with Shiva and, in the Greco-Roman pantheon, with Poseidon or Neptune, god of the oceans and the underworld. Whether conceived of as three aspects of the one or as three different archetypal beings, the triune roles of creator, preserver, and destroyer are central to the Hindu worldview.