Orgies, Marriage, or…?
One Girl’s Exploration of Polyamory
We’ve all seen examples of polyamory in pop culture; TV shows like Big Love and The L Word (and there wasn’t even a very big poly story line in this show) are too often the only glimpses many people have into this lifestyle.
A couple years ago a close personal friend of mine revealed that he’s forayed into the lifestyle before and longs to again. I was surprised because he’s currently in a long-term monogamous relationship. He’s kindly always been up to discussing the subject with me whenever I think of new questions to ask him.
I wanted to truly understand the polyamorous mindset for two reasons: it’s important to do your best to see through the eyes of others and also to be able to look at yourself through different eyes; and (this one’s a selfish reason), I’ve actually had a little crush on this friend for some time.
Okay, to be completely honest, it’s become more than just a crush. But, he’s in a relationship with someone else so I tucked my heart’s desire back in the recesses of my mind and did my best to ignore it. Now that he had revealed himself to be polyamorous, well…
I’ve always thought of myself as an open-minded person. Maybe even an extremely open-minded person. I was a liberal arts major. I enjoy relationships with people from many different walks of life. I love discussing differences with people between me and them; it’s always an exciting conversation and deepens our connection.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m interested in and supportive of all the different lifestyles and paths that people choose for themselves. As long as it’s not harming others, I abide by the idiom of live and let live.
Imagine my shock when I found myself delving into the subject of polyamory and realized I was feeling…uneasy. I’m embarrassed to admit it. At first, I couldn’t even put my finger on what exactly about my polyamory research was making me feel this way.
Emotionally, I was experiencing a negative and even wary reaction to the subject but, mentally, I was unclear as to why. Was I secretly a prude? Was it something about the idea of taking more than one lover at the same time that was hitting some inner remnant of my traditional Christian upbringing?
The thing about polyamory is that, just as with two-person relationships, there are as many different ways of practicing it as there are people in the world. I read one story about six adults living together and coparenting all of their children. It was a very pragmatic structure because there was always someone to watch the kids, someone to prepare dinner, someone to go to work and make money to support the family, etc.
As a single mother of two, I can certainly see the benefit of having some helping hands when it comes to childcare, housework, work, and actually every single other aspect of family life. With six adults in the house, everyone always had a shoulder to cry on or someone to share the story of their day with. In some ways it sounded idyllic.
I was reminded of communal living in stories I’d heard about hippies in the ’60s and ’70s. Communes offered a wonderful new way of living that broke away from the heteronormative, grueling 40-hour work weeks of mainstream society. The options it offers for interpersonal relationships, family relationships, and societal relationships are endless.
Almost 50% of marriages end in divorce; does this speak to a disconnect between our human inner natures and the stiff, time-honored roles we spend our lives trying to condense ourselves into?
A few communes from the hippie era are still in operation today. In an article for Maxim, author Neil Strauss writes about one such commune in San Francisco that first started in the early ‘60s. He states that when he visited the group for the interview, most of the members were in middle and late-middle age. They had been successfully living a communal and polyamorous lifestyle for decades.
Something that ate at me a little when I began dissecting my negative original reaction to polyamory is that in many of the first-person narrator stories I read about the lifestyle, people would define the relationship by how it was structured rather than by the specific individual natures of the people actually involved in it.
That is, they would describe in detail the relationship’s hierarchy (sometimes there is a primary spouse or partner and the other partners are secondary when it comes to decision-making in the group; other times all members of the relationship are completely equal), which members each person had a sexual relationship with, and whether a person’s partner was a nesting partner or not (nesting meaning that they share a home together). My quick list by no means encompasses all or even most of the facets and styles of poly relationships.
By comparison, when you ask someone in a couple about the nature of their relationship, they’ll typically tell you a little about the personality or traits of their partner. I found many of the descriptions of poly families to be a bit cold in this regard; lots of structure talk but ultimately a bit impersonal.
Neil Strauss’ interview with the members of Morehouse commune challenged my point of view immediately. There’s nothing impersonal about sharing decades of your life with the same group of people. I knew poly relationships could not possibly be cold; obviously, I was glaringly wrong to feel that they could be.
The first step to getting smarter is to admit that you know absolutely nothing; I was making progress! Strauss’ interview illuminated the poly lifestyle for me in a way that subreddits and POV blogs had not been able to do. I was finally starting to see a light cutting through the haze of knee-jerk emotions I was mired in.
“‘The best way to have strange ass is to be sure the primary woman you’re with is totally gratified and you have her agreement,’… ‘She has to feel she has enough of you and has a surplus of you. Overall, the viewpoint we take is if that extra person does not add to the primary relationship, it doesn’t go anywhere’” (Strauss, 2018).
This deliciously succinct answer from one commune member during Strauss’ interview contains a defining pearl of wisdom about poly relationships and successful relationships in general. The ultimate goal with any relationship is for all involved parties to be as satisfied as possible.
This is an ideal that is, at least in my personal experience, nearly impossible within couples. There will always be times when one partner is unable or unwilling to continue meeting the basic needs of the other person. Whether those needs are sexual, emotional, acts of service around the house, or child-rearing related; the simple truth is that no one person will ever be able to fulfill all of your needs.
Of course, even in poly relationships, the same type of problems arise. The benefit is that, in a poly relationship, if one person is not sexually available (or emotionally available, etc.) to their partner for whatever reason, the partner has someone else in the relationship who may be able to fulfill this basic need. It perhaps reduces the desire to look outside of the relationship for fulfillment.
The realization that multiple people can actually add to the stability of the relationship rather than weaken it was becoming clear to me. All of the regular relationship issues such as jealousy, feelings of neglect or abandonment, arguments over child-rearing and so on still apply to poly relationships. These issues apply to all human relationships and they aren’t going anywhere.
What’s key to the success of a relationship is the way in which the involved members cope with these problems. A certain degree of emotional intelligence is required by all members if the relationship is to be truly fulfilling for anyone.
Franklin Veaux, in his long-running website More Than Two, offers a brilliant way to view jealousy and other issues that can arise throughout a relationship, poly or otherwise.
“But that doesn’t mean that those people are expendable or interchangeable. People with more than one child also know that their love for each child is unique and irreplaceable. Similarly, people in a healthy polyamorous relationship know that their love for each person in that relationship is unique and irreplaceable — and knowing that drives away jealousy…
Some relationships work out; some don’t. Nature of the beast. Some polyamorous relationships work; some don’t. Some monogamous relationships work; some don’t. Yet because monogamy is the accepted social norm, when a marriage fails, people do not blame the institution of marriage…but when a poly relationship fails, people blame polyamory” (Veaux, 2020).
There’s nothing wrong with polyamory or with any lifestyle consenting adults choose to live. Of course, I was well aware of this but my original unease with the idea of polyamory had triggered my deep dive into the subject and into a more complete understanding of it.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get an opportunity to give a poly lifestyle a try myself. As a life-long introvert, frankly the idea of sharing my personal space with even one partner is intimidating.
But seriously, who wouldn’t want to be in a relationship where you can be reasonably assured that everyday you will have someone willing to listen to how your day was, someone to aid in the management of the home and family with you, and someone to fulfill your sexual needs?
Works Cited
Strauss, Neil. “Inside the World’s Longest-Running, Most Successful Free Love Commune.” Maxim, 17 June 2018. Maxim Media Inc., https://www.maxim.com/maxim-man/how-to-free-love-commune-neil-strauss-2018-6/. Accessed 14 Apr 2022.
Veaux, Franklin. “What, Like, Two Girlfriends?” More Than Two, 23 Nov 2020. Franklin Veaux, https://www.morethantwo.com/polyamory.html. Accessed 14 Apr 2022.
