This is a feature on The Atlantic's website and I thought people would find it interesting, given how much interest there seems to be in screaming and bickering about calmly and politely discussing various forms of open relationships.
The following is just a selection of quotes I found interesting; for fuller context I recommend reading the article. If you're going to participate, I insist upon it. There are also links in the article to further articles which may answer questions you have about specific bits of information.
On one form of polyamory:
On jealousy
On sorts of people are polys:
On differentiating swingers and polys, relationships to other subcultures, and unicorns:
On compersion:
On the sources of stigma:
On the children of polys:
On the early stages of research into Western, consensual non-monogamous relationships:
And more!
The following is just a selection of quotes I found interesting; for fuller context I recommend reading the article. If you're going to participate, I insist upon it. There are also links in the article to further articles which may answer questions you have about specific bits of information.
Multiple Lovers, Without Jealousy
Polyamorous people still face plenty of stigmas, but some studies suggest they handle certain relationship challenges better than monogamous people do.
On one form of polyamory:
When I met Jonica Hunter, Sarah Taub, and Michael Rios on a typical weekday afternoon in their tidy duplex in Northern Virginia, a very small part of me worried they might try to convert me.
All three live there together, but they arent roommatestheyre lovers.
Or rather, Jonica and Michael are. And Sarah and Michael are. And so are Sarah and whomever she happens to bring home some weekends. And Michael and whomever he might be courting. Theyre polyamorous.
Michael is 65, and he has a chinstrap beard that makes him look like he just walked off an Amish homestead. Jonica is 27, with close-cropped hair, a pointed chin, and a quiet air. Sarah is 46 and has an Earth Motherly demeanor that put me at relative ease.
Together, they form a polyamorous triad one of the many formations thats possible in this jellyfish of a sexual preference. Theres no one way to do polyamory is a common refrain in the community. Polyamorywhich literally means many lovescan involve any number of people, either cohabiting or not, sometimes all having sex with each other, and sometimes just in couples within the larger group.
On jealousy
I initially expected the polyamorous people I met to tell me that there were times their relationships made them sick with envy. After all, how could someone listen to his significant others stories of tragedy and conquest in the dating world, as Michael regularly does for Sarah, and not feel possessive? But it became clear to me that for polys, as theyre sometimes known, jealousy is more of an internal, negligible feeling than a partner-induced, important one. To them, its more like a passing head cold than a tumor spreading through the relationship.
Of the three people living in the Northern Virginia duplex, Sarah volunteers that shes the one most prone to jealousy. It can be about feeling like youre not special, or feeling like this thing belonged to me and now someones taken it.
She said it was rough for her when Jonica first moved in. Sarah had been accustomed to seeing Michael whenever she wanted, but she started to feel a pang when he spent time with Jonica.
At first I thought, Is something bad happening, something I dont want to support? she said. No, I want to support Michael and Jonica in being together. From there, I look at my own reaction. I can be an anxious person, so maybe I was feeling anxious. I find other ways of getting grounded. I might go for a walk or play guitar.
Its part of learning a healthy self-awareness and the ability to self-soothe, she added. I notice what Im feeling, and do a dive inward.
On sorts of people are polys:
Increasingly, polyamorous peoplenot to be confused with the prairie-dress-clad fundamentalist polygamistsare all around us. By some estimates, there are now roughly a half-million polyamorous relationships in the U.S., though underreporting is common. Some sex researchers put the number even higher, at 4 to 5 percent of all adults, or 10 to 12 million people. More often than not, theyre just office workers who find standard picket-fence partnerships dull. Or, like Sarah, theyre bisexuals trying to fulfill both halves of their sexual identities. Or theyre long-term couples who dont happen to think sexual exclusivity is the key to intimacy.
On differentiating swingers and polys, relationships to other subcultures, and unicorns:
Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist who interviewed 40 polyamorous people over the course of several years for her recent book, The Polyamorists Next Door, says that polyamorous configurations with more than three people tend to be rarer and have more turnover. Polys are more likely to be liberal and educated, she said, and in the rare cases that they do practice religion, its usually paganism or Unitarian Universalism.
Polys differentiate themselves from swingers because they are emotionally, not just sexually, involved with the other partners they date. And polyamorous arrangements are not quite the same as open relationships because in polyamory, the third or fourth or fifth partner is just as integral to the relationship as the first two are.
Polyamory overlaps somewhat with geek culture, such as cosplay, or the kink world, such as BDSM. Many couples who become interested in polyamory start by looking for a single, bisexual woman to add to the relationship. In fact, this quest has become so common (and its object has remained so elusive) that its known as hunting the unicorn.
But Sheff cautions that once said unicorn is caught, the men are sometimes not as well-tended as they hoped to be. During the actual sex, the women get interested in each other, and the men describe it as not all that.
Even many devout monogamists admit that it can be hard for one partner to supply the full smorgasbord of the others sexual and emotional needs. When critics decry polys as escapists who have simply gotten bored in traditional relationships, polys counter that the more people they can draw close to them, the more self-actualized they can be.
On compersion:
When Erin and Bill meet a man they like, all three go out together, with the two men sitting on either side of Erin and holding one of each of her hands.
Bill says watching his wife have sex with another man is anything but unsettling. Instead, it sometimes induces compersionthe poly principle of basking in the joy of a partners success in romance, just as you would with his or her success in work or sports.
There are so many societal norms that say, He looked the wrong way at someone so Im gonna go all Carrie Underwood on his vehicle, Erin said. Polyamory is about the idea that having their undivided attention isnt the end all, be all.
On the sources of stigma:
Though some ancient civilizations permitted polygamy, or multiple wives, the idea of monogamous marriage has been deeply rooted in Western society since the time of the Ancient Greeks. (Although monogamous Hellenic men were free to have their way with their male and female slaves.)
Monogamy quickly became the normand social norms influence our psychology. The process of adhering to social rules and punishing rule violators tickles the reward circuits of our brains. Some studies suggest that each time you think to yourself that polyamory is icky, an oxytocin molecule gets its wings.
On the children of polys:
Polyamory might seem like the bailiwick of the young and carefree, but many of its practitioners have children. The idea of parents having live-in third, fourth, or fifth partners isnt frowned upon.
Bill and Erin dont hide their outside relationships from Erins 17-year-old daughter. One day, the couple was watching the television show Sister Wives, which documents a polygamous family in Utah, when the daughter remarked that it was an interesting system.
She was talking about Sister Wives, and I said, What about brother husbands? Bill asked her. I said, Your mom and I date a guy. And she was like, Cool.
Some marriage experts dont agree that polyamorys impact on children is neutral, though. "We know that kids thrive on stable routines with stable caregivers, said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist and the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Polyamory can be like a marriage-go-round, Wilcox said. When kids are exposed to a revolving carousel of spouses, that experience of instability and transition can be traumatic. (Wilcox, who has contributed to The Atlantic, is known for having rather conservative views: He recently penned a Washington Post op-ed about how marriage ostensibly protects women, and he consulted on a much-contested study about the children of same-sex couples.)
Wilcox also assumes that polyamorous people must struggle to devote enough time and attention to each partner and child. Its a challenge for me as a husband and father to give my wife and kids enough attention, Wilcox said. I cant imagine how challenging it would be to add another partner. There are limits to time and space.
Theres some evidence that polygamy, in particular, can be harmful, not only to children but to women and men. The anthropologist Joseph Henrich has found that the worlds polygamous societies gradually evolved toward monogamous marriage because doing so resolved many of the problems created when powerful men hoarded all the wives for themselves. Meanwhile, these societies mobs of horny, angry, low-status single men would lead to significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as Henrich and fellow researchers wrote in a recent study.
By easing the competition to scoop up as many wives as possible, monogamy allows men to instead focus on things like child-rearing, long-term planning, and saving money. It also increases the age at first marriage and lowers fertility rates, Henrich found. He suggests thats one reason polygamy was outlawed in Japan in 1880, in 1953 in China, and in 1955 in India, for most religious groups. But the welfare of children living in todays polyamorous households wont be knowable until there are more long-term studies on that (tiny) cohort.
On the early stages of research into Western, consensual non-monogamous relationships:
In fact, theres a paucity of any sort of research on consensual, Western non-monogamy. A 2005 study that examined 69 polygamous families found that there often was a deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their mutual husband. Conflict between the co-wives, the researchers wrote, is pervasive and often marked by physical or verbal violence. But that analysis was based on predominantly African cultures where men take several wives, not the more egalitarian polyamorous community in the developed world.
The nascent research that does exist suggests these modern polyamorous relationships can be just as functionaland sometimes even more sothan traditional monogamous pairings.
Perhaps most obviously, people who have permission to cheatthat is, through a planned, non-monogamous arrangementare more likely to use condoms and have frequent STI tests than clandestine cheaters are. Apparently, sneaking around is already so morally torturous that a stop at Walgreens for Trojans would simply be too much to handle.
Terri Conley, a professor of psychology and womens studies at the University of Michigan who studies polyamory, has analyzed a sample of 1,700 monogamous individuals, 150 swingers, 170 people in open relationships, and 300 polyamorous individuals for a forthcoming study. She said that while people in open relationships tend to have lower sexual satisfaction than their monogamous peers, people who described themselves as polyamorous tended to have equal or higher levels of sexual satisfaction.
Whats more, polyamorous people dont seem to be plagued by monogamous-style romantic envy. Bjarne Holmes, a psychologist at Champlain College in Vermont has found that polyamorous people tend to experience less overall jealousy, even in situations that would drive monogamous couples to Othello-levels of suspicion. "It turns out that, hey, people are not reacting with jealousy when their partner is flirting with someone else," Holmes told LiveScience.
Sheff agreed. I would say they have lower-than-average jealousy, she said. People who are very jealous generally dont do polyamory at all.
And more!
