I have limited myself to one of these blogs a month and no more. This is for two, related reasons. One is that reading about the same thing over and over must grow tiresome, as I'm sure people would remind me just lately if they were only a little less polite. The other is that I absolutely, unequivocally DO NOT wish to be seen as proselytizing for a lifestyle choice that I very much recognize is not for everyone.
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POLYAMORY: the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. (Wikipedia, as usual, has an excellent primer)
It's probably Baader-Meinhof playing tricks on me, but it really does seem like polyamory is everywhere lately. It's as if the media, having accepted that same-sex marriage is a fait accompli, has gone in search of the next group of people to make acceptable. It just so happens that I'm a member of the group in question, this time around.
The media attention is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand I'm grateful that attempts are being made to understand a community that is looked on with skepticism and sometimes outright disgust. It has been a struggle for me not to produce a long string of polyamory blog entries. Not because I want everybody to abandon monogamy and adopt polyamory...far from it! No, I just want to clear up some very fundamental and remarkably persistent misunderstandings about "poly", what it is, how it works, and why some people choose to practice it.
On the other...there's a lot even the most poly-friendly exposés are getting wrong. (Note: I do not endorse any particular article of the seven I linked above.) And even the poly community itself is sometimes guilty of sabotaging its cause.
There are some few parallels to be drawn with being gay. Both groups are stigmatized and misunderstood, both exist outside the norm, and both enclose a wide range of attitudes and behaviours.
I've come to believe that polyamory, like gayness, exists on a spectrum. Let's call it the Parrot Scale...get it? Polly the parrot?
Sigh. Okay. There are people who are completely and unmistakably monogamous. Never cheated (for whatever definition of 'cheating' their spouse holds).
Momentary digression: not to get all Clintonian on you, but that parenthetical is a legitimate question. I was just reading a survey which found seven percent of married people consider just thinking about someone outside the relationship to be cheating. By that definition the few faithful people that exist out there are called either asexual or saints. The same survey found that 73% of married people felt that falling in love with another person constituted cheating even if there was no sexual contact. That number, quite frankly, seems very low to me. And 31% considered staying up all night talking to someone else to be cheating (really? seriously? Never would have occurred to me.)
Anyway, let's assign these devout monogamists a zero on the Parrot Scale.
There are others who seem to be hard-wired for polyamory. Some of them try monogamy and fail miserably, but because they are unaware of other options, they keep bashing their heads against what is, to them, a brick wall. Others, sadly--I just wrote about some of them this morning--are never satisfied with what they have, and may claim polyamory to legitimize their greed. (That usually doesn't take: poly by definition requires multiple committed relationships of one kind or another, and these types don't generally handle commitment well.) A third subset places a high value on emotional intimacy, juggling multiple very close friendships, and can thus "pass" for monogamous even if by many measures they are not. Given that my poly impulses are exceptionally strong and go back as far as I can remember, I'd have to call myself a Parrot Six.
I know many people, including gay people, who would not be caught dead anywhere near a gay pride parade. The straight ones aren't necessarily bigots: they just have no urge to watch penises blowing in the breeze. Likewise the gay people aren't necessarily closeted: it's that they do not feel a need to draw attention to something about themselves they consider no more noteworthy than having green eyes or red hair. Yet the parades continue, with their flagrant, you might say flaming abuse of social norms...can you think of anywhere else a naked man wouldn't be promptly arrested?
Gay rights have come a long, long way. There are only a few rancid bigots left who equate homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality and rant against "the gay agenda". but most of us sane people have long understand that gays are no different than anyone else.
It is telling that one of the chief arguments the Right used to muster against gay marriage was that it would soon lead to group marriage, and oh dear God the horror of that. This disregards one of the fundamental tenets of polyamory, right there in the definition: ...with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Coercion has no place in a polyamorous world: your standard polygamist cult, with its leader "married" to several brainwashed teens, simply does not qualify. Many people seem incapable of imagining a triad or a quad relationship. Trust me, they're out there in numbers that might surprise you, and they consist of every conceivable assortment of genders and sexualities. Other than that, though, they mirror traditional marriage in all but number. Provided informed consent exists among all members, I see no reason why such relationships shouldn't be legally enshrined.
One way I think being gay is different from being poly is that polyamory, no matter how hard-wired the impulse may be, is usually a choice. I think some study is required here: there is an argument to be made that, just as gay people have no choice over whom they are sexually attracted to, poly people may be incapable of limiting love (by whatever definition you choose for that slippery word) to one person alone.But I would hesitate to call polyamory an orientation in case my gay friends feel belittled by the appellation.
At any rate, there are polyamorists who come off as sanctimonious (the gay equivalent would probably be referring to straights with the epithet "breeders") and who look down on all those "poor, unenlightened mono people" (even that word, "mono", sounds inferior--isn't life in stereo better? There are others who seem addicted to the thrill of the chase (they call it NRE, for 'new relationship energy') and who seem as if they're choosing polyamory as a way of acting out as many dramas as possible. This is counterproductive. It makes it all too easy to forget the number of happily poly people living in the background.
There is one other widespread bind spot that monogamous people tend to have regarding polyamory. One of the articles above is replete with it. You can tell people that poly involves multiple committed relationships with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved and they'll nod their heads and then ask how either party can possibly justify the cheating.
There is no cheating. Or rather, "cheating" in polyamory involves knowingly violating an agreed-upon boundary, the same as in monogamy. It's just that the boundaries in poly are different. They might involve certain activities (again, not always sexual) with certain people in certain places. If someone doesn't practice safer sex, that can be and usually is seen as cheating. Or it may involve allocation of time: say if one person spends considerably more time with another than previously agreed upon.
It's good to see polyamory getting some attention. I just wish people would make an effort to understand it, even if they can't accept it.
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