Newsweek article on polyamory, and a discussion of its feminist roots.

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A guest post from Newsweek writer Jessica Bennett:

I've never been in a relationship with two people at the same time, but I've spent the last two months talking about it constantly. Not because I'm obsessed with the idea—though, um, increasingly I am—but because I was writing a piece for Newsweek about one particular multi-partner family. Terisa and Scott have been together for 12 years, and live in a lakeside neighborhood of Seattle, where they share a vegetable garden and three dogs. For 10 years, Terisa has also been dating Larry, who on the side is dating Vera, who is married to Matt. Now Terisa is dating Matt, too. It’s like a real life Big Love, without the Mormonism: they’re “polyamorists”—a term used to describe people who believe in loving, consensual, multi-partner relationships. And while it’s easy to brush off anything with the word “poly” as some kind of frat-house fantasy gone wild, polyamory has a decidedly feminist bent.

The key to poly relationships is gender equality, and women have been central to the creation of the practice. The word "polyamory" itself was coined by two women, in the early ’90s, and the first five books on the topic were all female-authored. Over the past year, writers like Jenny Block and Tristan Taormino, the sex columnist, have written on the topic, while celebrities Tilda Swinton (who called herself a “freak” in an interview with Double X) and Carla Bruni, the first lady of France, have spoken out in favor of open relationships. “Multiple-partner relationships have always gone on, but they have rarely had the gender equity characteristic of poly relationships,” says sociologist Elisabeth Sheff, one of the few researchers to study polyamory.

The way these families make their relationships work is perhaps the most feminine of all of this: by good old-fashioned talking. (Terisa, Matt, and the rest of the clan describe how they make their polyamorous relationship work in this video segment.) Imagine having the problems you have with one partner with three. It requires constant communication—so much that polyamorists joke they have no time to actually have sex, because, well, they're so damn busy talking. “I like to call it polyagony,” one of my sources joked. “It works for some, and for others, it’s a f--king nightmare.”

Photograph by Getty Images.

Tags: big love, newsweek, polyamory, relationships

Samantha Henig is the associate editor of Double X, and can be reached at samantha.henig@doublex.com.

Comments

Re: Jane Dough

By: meggordon.ny.1984 | Fri, 07/31/2009 - 11:00

Polyamorists are not trying to make their lifestyle the standard, they just want acceptance and for other people to be aware of their options in terms of relationships. All of our society's great love stories are about one man and one woman because it has been unacceptable for an exceptionally long period of time (forever) to have love stories that are about two women, two men, or multiple people. Also, how many of these one man and one woman stories are about affairs? Is it still a one man and one woman story if there is a rejected or abandoned spouse that is left behind for a new lover?

Polyamory

By: Jane Dough | Fri, 07/31/2009 - 03:23

So some feminists coin the term "polyamory" and now its the coolest, check-it-out-on-reality-TV thing? Puhleeeze. To paraphrase a famous quote, 'there ain't nothing new under the sun.' This thing called polyamory has been done and done. We called it 'free love' in the sixties and folks living together having sex was called a commune, not a 'family' well, unless you were some weirdly cultist group like Manson. If this love style AGAIN becomes fashionable, it'll be like the flower children's recycled hip-huggers and peasant-style tops, new again decades later but destined to go back out. Why? Well, for the same reason those hip-huggers and peasant tops gotta go; they're not classics. Monogamy, on the other hand, is classic--it's stood the test of time. In fact, look at the world's great love stories---predominantly between one male and one female. Polyamorists and/or polygamists can preach all they want about the superiority of their love relationships, but their lifestyles will never be the standard. Never.

Morality?

By: SmaugJr | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 18:48

Until God posts His own response to this article, I'm not too worried about the "adulterous" angle here. Abraham was not monogamous, nor David, nor Esau, nor Moses, nor Solomon (though that last fella was apparently punished for having *too many* wives... I guess keeping it under seven hundred is a limit the rest of us can live with). I'm told Islam permits up to four wives. No Abrahamic religion appears to smile upon polyandrous marriages, but that's just one of many issues I have with such religions in the first place.

My point this time is that it's a mistake to automatically conflate a committed polyamorous marriage with adultery. Call Moses an adulterer if you want, but he'll get no such epithet from me. After carrying those heavy old commandments down the side of Sinai, I think he might have paused to read No. 7.

There is no moral standard

By: Usama3 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 17:33

There is no moral standard for polyamory. Anecdotal moral relativism is nothing to speak of. This is the absence of moral intelligence in America today that continues to permeate every generation, compounding the hypocricy and amorality that was once passed as 'free love' by the previous generation.

You folks don't want to be judged? So don't make your personal lives into a public model and standard. Adultery is adultery. Call it an "open marriage", "multipartner relation", "polyamorous relation"- its adultery. God still exists and God still has final moral supremacy even if you choose to disbelieve or deny His existance.

You are not 'progressing' in this way. Humans have engaged in the same transgression from the moral standard and each generation thought they were superior to God and all of His believers.

Do what works for you

By: eflaum | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 17:21

Personally I am naturally monogamous. I read the Newsweek article and all I could think was, what a lot of work! However I am not so arrogant as to expect all others to be like me. My husband, for example, is not.

We have an open marriage in which affairs are allowed. I have no desire to have one but I leave my husband free to do so, as long as he is safe and the relationship does not take away from my time with him. No reason he should be lonely when I am busy, and unsatisfied with my limited libido. The result is that he is happier with me and more committed to me - in spite of having only 1 or 2 affairs in over 10 yrs - than he could ever be if I forced him to live within my constraints. And I lose nothing.

We do what works for us. May you do the same.

no hedging bets here

By: CMV | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 16:27

I'm going to have to look at this Newsweek article - just by letting non-monogamous people speak about their own lives it already sounds like a welcome departure from the dismissive, derisive treatment non-monogamous relationships usually receive in all except the explicitly polyamorous-subcultural media.

I'm ecstatically married, for 3 years, in an open marriage; and I assure the previous commenters, there's no hedging of bets, emotional or otherwise, involved. Sure, there are complicated questions and feelings and compromises to talk out -- but the way my husband and I see it, there would be a whole other set of compromises and negotiations if we were monogamous instead, and these complications (who can hook up with/date whom, where, when, and under what circumstances, etc.) are the ones we choose to deal with, the ones that make our relationship deeper and more joyous, as opposed to the whole set of compromises and risks and power dynamics around saying "never again will either of us ever have sex with anyone else." I know that for lots of couples, it's the other way around.

But what really makes me sad is to see people entering into lifelong monogamous commitment and *not* really feeling that the negotiation and communication of monogamy is for them - chafing under it while going into it, yet thinking (and being told everywhere) that the only 'real' relationships are monogamous ones.

I've written to Emily Yoffe at the washingtonpost.com "Dear Prudence" live chat - and plenty of other advice columnists as well - asking them to please consider that monogamy isn't the only way to organize a happy, functional, generous adult life, and that people who know they're chafing against it AS they're going into it would do everyone a favor by looking into other kinds of relationships that can and do work, instead of characterizing the gut feeling that monogamy is not for you as some kind of self-indulgent, immature hang-up: "Well, if there were a perfect way to suppress, divorce wouldn't have been invented. What you are feeling is totally normal, and there is no magic secret to not desiring other women. But it's like anything else where you decide to control your impulses for your greater benefit: studying for the test instead of going out drinking; saying no to the second portion so you can fit in your pants; keeping your pants zipped because what you have with your girlfriend is worth more than the temporary thrill of chasing someone new. As with giving up anything, it should become easier the longer you do it." (http://www.slate.com/id/2217021/pagenum/all/#p2).

I think it's only human nature to want a setup in which you can sleep with anyone you want while your partner sleeps with no one but you. Of course, the people who actually take steps to bring this situation about are liars, cheats, users, and utterly contemptible -- the only fair, ethical solution is one of two compromises: 1) 'You can't sleep with anyone else ever again, and I won't either;' or 2) 'You can sleep with other people, but so can I.' Either one has to be entered into honestly and openly, with an enormous amount of communication about the difficulties of that option -- but either one should be able to be freely chosen, and that won't be the case until the latter option is no longer stigmatized!

Hedging bets? Not necessarily.

By: SmaugJr | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 15:30

I can understand why one might view polyamory as a cowardly reaction to the risks of monogamous commitment, and I think that viewpoint might even be justifiable when applied to many, if not most, people. But rest assured, there are genuinely polyamorous people whose love for each other is not diminished by its lack of monogamy. As a culture, we're used to viewing the various kinds of love relationships through traditional eyes, so that even though my love for each of my six siblings is not viewed as greater or lesser than it would be if I had only one sibling, somehow it's expected that we can only handle one romantic love at a time. Though time commitments are a zero-sum game insofar as, during a mortal lifetime, the hours spent alone or at work or in the arms of an extramarital affair will all constitute time not spent with one's spouse, this must not be mistaken for the non-zero-sum game that is love. Just as it would be nonsensical to say that my love for my brother is one-sixth of the love that you feel for your only sibling, so is it fallacious to assume that romantic love is automatically and necessarily reduced by the participation of additional partners. Our time and energy our finite; our love is not. This distinction is important. It means that poly families have to work extra hard to make sure everyone's getting enough attention. It does not mean that these relationships are freakish or immoral or automatically doomed to failure.

Speaking of hollow existences, it seems to me that a lifelong monogamous relationship does not in and of itself provide any sort of insulation from hollowness. It's lovely when you give your all to a person, and that other person gives his or her all right back to you. Lovely... and sadly rare. Why do half of all monogamous marriages end in divorce? How many of the marriages that do NOT end in divorce consist of lengthy years of silence, distrust, apathy, infidelity, joylessness, or insecurity? Why would it be a lesser choice to live in a larger family wherein the workload is shared among a greater number, and the joys are magnified by a greater number? It certainly makes more logical sense simply as a logistics arrangement, IF all the people involved are up to it... and at this point, admittedly few are. But my hat's off to those intrepid few who handle the jealousies and insecurities with honesty and candidness. Way to evolve!

Definitelty hedging emotional bets

By: jennies1897 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 15:28

I've considered the idea of polyamory the same way I've thought about in what ways I might be different from others sexually. I've decided that I'd rather say I'm too insecure to be secure sharing someone than to tell people it has more to do with me preventing myself from doing just that - hedging my emotional bets.

If I'm going in a relationship, it's all out...I make myself do it :P

Hedging emotional bets

By: CorkPopper | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 12:24

I wonder how much polyamory is about holding back, not allowing yourself to become too emotionally wrapped up in one person. As I understand it, the original Oneida polyamorous community explicitly discouraged "special love", and didn't want its members to be passionately attached to anyone or anything more than any other. Which would effectively eliminate some life's usual pain and stress, I suppose, but it implies a pretty hollow existence. Because anybody I was happily willing to share with another woman would be someone I didn't fully love, it seems to me. And I know for damn sure that my husband wouldn't be OK with sharing me with another man (and having to listen to it, ick). I'm not saying polyamory is morally wrong, necessarily...but it seems like it eliminates the possibility of giving your all to another person. Which is hard and scary but ultimately deeply fulfilling, if the other person is giving their all to you.

Polyamory is interesting

By: meggordon.ny.1984 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 11:11

I agree that polyamory is interesting. I think if most people were honest with themselves, they'd admit that life long monogamy isn't satisfying. However, I think a lot of people would be unable to talk through all the jealousy that a polyamorous relationship would entail. I think that's why you get such knee jerk defensive comments about it (like the first comment posted here). In general people are unsatisfied with their life long monogamous relationships and they reject polyamory because they think that all those jealous feelings would make them even more unhappy. Human relationships are messy aren't they?

The Feminist Roots of Polyamory