Why I Believe in Polyamory, But Still Feel its Problematic
I love the idea of Polyamory. (Polyamory means honest non-monogamy… and no don’t confuse it with polygamy, which is a patriarchal construct where only men can have more than one sexual partner)
#1 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it because I just like rebelling against society’s norms 😉
#2 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it because it clearly embraces feminism and equality.
#3 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it from a practical stance – so few people seem capable of easily upholding monogamy, and they just end up cheating and hurting people they said they loved.
#4 Reason Pro Polyamory
But more than anything, I love it from a spiritual stance – in that, if we are spiritual beings whose base essence is ‘LOVE’… and love knows no boundaries… then who are we to even imagine that we puny beings could possibly limit loves expression to only one other physical form??
So heck, that’s a lot of plusses. But heck, I also perceive a few fundamental negatives.
I’ve tried it myself; I’ve hung around poly communities, and helped scores of poly people with their relationships over the last 10 years of a 22 year career in counseling/coaching. But I have a fundamental concern. …
My sense is that we have not evolved enough as a species in terms of emotional intelligence to be successful with poly relationships.
To live poly-amorously requires enormous emotional intelligence – ie the capacity to know yourself, transcend and include your ego, excellent communication skills, capacity to hold boundaries, feel empathy, be organized and highly responsible etc.
It also means that you have the willingness and capacity to hang in there when the going gets tough.
What that means practically, is if you are not doing well with one partner, don’t run off and make yourself feel better with your other lover. Instead, hang in there and solve your issues together. It requires a deeply skilled capacity to play win-win
That means, no, you don’t have the ‘lets open up our relationship’ discussion with your long term spouse, and then introduce your new girlfriend a week later. (Heck, doesn’t it usually take longer than a week to decide if someone is your girlfriend? So, doesn’t that likely mean that you were going out with her before the ‘conversation’?)*
So that’s a perfect lead in to the fundamental requirement of all relationships, whether poly or mono – TRUST. To build trust requires absolute honesty and transparency. There is a huge risk in jumping out of the safer confines and understood limitations of monogamy, so trust is even more paramount in poly relationships.
It also requires lots and lots of time and a great ability to plan and schedule.
If you are one of those people who highly value freedom (and if you are attracted to poly, then you likely are)… then be prepared to commit lots of time to discussing, negotiating, organizing and scheduling and creating guidelines and boundaries etc. All essential stuff if you don’t want to fall off the poly perch.
Most people find it too difficult to manage their chemicals.
And no, I’m not talking about alcohol and drugs… tho’ abuse of drugs is also a sure-fire killer of relationships. I’m talking about the ubiquitous NRE (New Relationship Energy). When people meet someone new and all that glorious serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine are coursing through your veins, how easy can it be to forget or ignore your other companion. How easy can it be to spend all your spare cash on the new person, and leave your other companion to languish… no holidays, no long weekends, no flowers, no planning for childcare. (* these comments refer to real life examples*)
Okay, I could wax more lyrical, but its probably all been said previously in some excellent poly manuals. In essence, I think that as we evolve, we will tend more to enjoy having the choice of poly… as well as mature or love-based monogamy. But until then, the vast majority of us need to recognize that for every degree of freedom we would like, we also need to be more aware and responsible.
And my experience has been that the vast majority of us just don’t quite have the skills and capacities required. So I suspect we will continue the joy and tears as we experiment and learn our way to greater consciousness and connection.
PS. I am looking forward to being proven wrong 😉
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There is more evidence, just in simple psychology of human interactions and the very nature of love and human attachment alone, for the reality of humans naturally mating for life, aka being “monogamous”, rather than this idea that we are naturally polyamorous. If we were “meant” to be with multiple people, then the natural, primal “jealousy” reaction, wouldn’t happen, plain and simple. But it does. Jealousy is not a social construct or product of conditioning. It is a deep primal reaction to someone else going after your mate. It’s not about “ownership”, it’s about the fact that, naturally, we imprint on and bond, deeply, with our chosen mate. We bond with that mate, and develop strong feelings of love and attachment to them, we want to care for them, to protect them, and ultimately, to make babies with them. That all happens for a reason, and it is one of the most fundamental core aspects of human beings a pack creature.
A healthy relationship requires that you give all of your love, and all of yourself, to that one person. That is how it works, that is how it was meant to work. You cannot give all of your love nor all of yourself, to multiple people. You just can’t. And if it’s just all about physical pleasure, well then……I’m sorry, but in my view, if you feel like you have to go looking outside of your relationship for something that’s “missing”, you’re either with the wrong person, or the two of you simply aren’t as connected and communicative as you should be. In any healthy, thriving relationship, you form a symbiotic unit in a way, in that you take care of each other, in every conceivable fashion, and should be left wanting for nothing, because you provide for each other, help each other, support each other, etc.
I’m all about free will. Good call on personal experience, Eric, and also to the rest of you that pointed out problems in monogamous relationships (divorce rate, duh!). Personally, the idea of a woman sharing herself with another man is unattractive to me and I’d expect her to feel the same way, but with all these fantasies running amuk in conjunction with an entire textbook of recognized sexual orientations (Straight, bi, gay, lesbian, trans, two-spirit, etc.) make it impossible to have a “standard” or dare I say “system” of desired sexuality. Between that, you have to throw in physical aggression. Every woman I’ve been with I’ve had to “steal.” That’s an invitation to fight. I can’t imagine sharing with someone like that. Keep in mind this isn’t a moral argument, but I’m not above my internal need to gravitate towards loyalty, and avoid situations that will spurn jealousy and manipulation – It’s childish b.s.
I don’t see how any of the negatives you’ve listed are not also applicable to monogamous relationships! Time management, hanging in there when the going gets tough, “managing your chemicals”…. these are all applicable to any relationship. It’s really frustrating to me when people dis polyamory by bringing up problems that are universal. You might as well just say that any and all relationships are “problematic”!
First, sorry for my bad english.
I think people like to see only the pros of ideologies they trust. So, is interesting to remember that those ideologies have negatives. Some people like me had gone to polyamory from a monogamous relationship, and i can tell its harder to handle. Small troubles can become into a tragedy so easy if the partners dont comunicate efectively….
Again, you can say the same thing about monogamy. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I simply don’t agree that either one is “more likely” to cause problems. It all depends on your mindset and communication style. I’ve had plenty of “small troubles” that became major issues in monogamous relationships, while polyamory has been remarkably easy for me. People just need to be aware of what kinds of issues are likely to crop up in whatever kind of relationship they happen to be in, and be on the lookout for them — whether it’s co-dependency, jealousy, time management, etc.
my thesis: the necessity for poly-amory is cultivated in doubt.
the obvious reality is that monogamous relationships cause more problems. this is precisely why i prefer them. poly-amory is a kin to masterbation. its too comfortable, its too easy, theres no risk. love is an adventure about finding love, not finding sexual partners. poly-amory induces a psuedo-love, that of universal love. you spread your energy thin. if you focus on 2 or multiple people you are defacing the power of particular love. its similar to diet-love, an easy choice as to never harm yourself in the commission of a “love”. we can have more individual loves, as was the lesson with fat free turkey, since its fat free, we can enjoy more! let us wear condoms, and be okay with that. (but is that okay? when something in our actions, of love, necessitates essentially shielding us from the germs, from the backlash of our love, was this love? can you love someone you don’t know or trust enough to penetrate flesh only? i doubt it)
i want to comment further on the original post, something about love knowing no boundaries, even posited in the form of a question. yes love must create boundaries, this is obvious, in fact maybe a little diminishing of love could be useful to a truly monogamous relationship. the point im making is that an excess of love usually turns violent, extremely-so and hateful even! best example i could think from the top of my head is the infinite love a father has for his child, often perceived as over-bearing and cruel to the child, regardless of the trial and authenticity of the fathers true love.
the debate imo could be further reduced to a question between, monogamous love, fully polyamorous, partially amorous, and even a potential 4th category of limited poly-amorous (not to mention possibly a million other alternatives to what polyamory could be) fully poly meaning essentially dtf, ready to go at a moments notice, partially poly meaning open to the prospects of any new love, but discriminatory against the majority, and limited poly, meaning having a select set of partners that does not change.
imo poly-amory creates a newer, much more evil problem than that of lost passion and the loss of the essential value of love. it makes you fake the actual usage of the word “love”. when you say “i love you”. what you are really saying is that, “I love you now, but soon i will love x, and then i will love y and then i will love z, you are one item in a set of many, and when i come back to you, the image and shape of our love will forever be different, i am in love with you now as i am, but this love does not imply eternity, it has limit.” so as to discover that while a particular love actually was infinite, actually was eternal, poly-amorous love turns finite.
this is why perhaps love is too deep of a word to attatch to purely masterbatory sexual relationships.
I kind of don’t even know what to say to this. It sounds like you’re confusing polyamory with promiscuity (i.e.,”down-to-fuck,”) which is isn’t. The second half of the word (-amory) means love, and many polyamorous relationships do, in fact, involve committing to partners and not sleeping around (see = closed triad). Anyone who thinks polyamory is “too comfortable” or “too easy” has likely not spent much time interacting with polyamorists. Learning to meet the needs of multiple sexual partners (sometimes at once) is hardly “masturbatory”.
I’m going to give you a pass on this one because it sounds like you genuinely haven’t looked into the subject. But your equating love with “over-bearing” and “cruel” worries me a bit. Please bear in mind not everyone shares your definition of “love” is, and that some people are, in fact, not looking for “infinite” or “eternal” love. Just as people have different thresholds of pain or sadness, people have different ways of experiencing love, and unless you’re a trained psychologist, it’s not your place to interpret those emotions for them.
Crap, u just wanna sleep with A lot of ppl, lolz, that’s not bad, just don’t make drama telling them u “love” them, hahah
Bravo!!!!
My wife and I have been in an open relationship for more than 7 years. We knew early on that it was the relationship style that fit us. Was it easy?…Nope! we had to unlearn the things that challenged our natural desire to love and connect more, and had to learn and practice the skills that have allowed us to do so safely, honestly, and happily. Is it still challenging sometimes?….YES! It is so easy to slip into our old ways; dealing with parenting, careers, etc…does not always leave time for outside relationships, intimate or otherwise….and yes, timing is very important. COMMUNICATE! Enjoy moments with people who allow you to BE YOURSELF! Lead with LOVE even when it is hard. Cry, Laugh, Love More!
#1-3 are all ego driven and yukky. forget the word spiritual. no love involved. love is at peace and doesnt do anything anti bec of anyone or some system.
#4 is dumb bec in spiritual sense meeting authentically with a profound sense of belonging etc and UPLIFTING one another doesn’t require having sex, nor constant meetings, nor is it possible to manage that with everybody and is not required. should the dalai lama and amma have to be cuddling with a million people a year, and catch all sorts of astral dis-eases from them?
unconditional love, and no jealousy etc has nothing to do with the relationship stuff misunderstood as free sex, free love, polystuff.
this concept is simply another “ideal” fantasy by emotionally defunct westerners seeking stuff. in fact, seeking HEART OPENING. the dirt ist, that just like in beginner’s tantra, they mess up everyone they touch on spiritual and intangible levels in the process and cause more dirt and harm than good.
forget it. once you meet super awesome divine profound loving partner couples – those very rare ones – all this mental fabrication falls to ASHES. bec it is about the deep soul union, and the rest is only poop and jumping into transformative experiences on the TRAIL, but not the GOAL. and repeat: it is self-therapy short term experience for seeking people (=un-whole, = sick)
we’ve seen so much of it in sweat lodges, yoga, tantra – yeeeeh, inspired > zoooom, fanatic, doing the CONVENIENT pleasurable stuff (=not giving) > and causing disgusting effects – which shamans can even see visibly. BRRRR.
Yeah…polyamory may have problems….but so do all monagymous relationships too these days….almost everyone gets divorced down the line. so yay choose your problems people, the ones you want to be part of the process for, whether poly or mono!
Hey great post. And very well put. I do agree. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, it’s real tough I think. But even the fact that your partner is open to the idea can help disperse the difficult emotions that can ensue if one of you has a strong attraction to someone else.
hahahahah girl – are you nuts? polyamory is unconditioned love. you know? no cannot know – must feel:) there are no borders, so you start learning other kinds of “language” to conversate with other who are living just like you, by the heart. wake up girl, there is no society or something material in this world – now is the century of the heart! open it and dont crumble your head on topics like polyamory or something… come and go the way of light with us! namaste
I love this conversation and i love the article and comments, thank you Frances, its great to read all of your words, i resonate with all of it. and i agree. Im not sure we are(many of us anyway) able to handle one relationship let alone multiple, but i love the idea and i know that is my path.
I think the main reason i am single is because i dont want to comit to one person, i want to share several, Pink comes to mind…. Im not a slut, i just love love.
I want to meet a man and a woman and have a wonderfully loving and beautiful relationship which is based on trust and longevity and all those scrumptious and confronting emotions. Im excited to be on this journey and i value all the comments you are making even the ones i dont agree with, in fact, especially those, because i love conversation and am open to all ideas and sharing of words and love and bodies.. Namaste love and blessings xxx
I love this conversation as well. It is something my husband and i have had conversations about…starting out as a joke “I think we need another wife” our conversations evolved into mutual agreement. I watched the first two seasons of Sister Wives…and was intrigued and interested how they communicated and lived their lives together. I began to realize that some of my expectations I had of my husband were/are things that he can’t fufill, but another woman could. Now, I am not mormon or do I assign myself to any religion. I would love to find a woman who would be my best freind, who we could fall in love with. My problem, is how do you manifest something like that? At least with polygamy and the mormons it is a cultural norm and there are others that share the same frame of mind. I have a wonderful husband and family and wouldn’t want to jepordize that.
I am exactly at the same point. Great to read ur story. Thanks for sharing.
I’m coming up on twenty years with my wife (over seventeen legally married) and my lovely boyfriend and I just celebrated our seventh anniversary. We live in a big house with my wife’s “other husband” (not legally, but that’s what she calls him) of six years and frequently have visits from my wife’s lovely girlfriend of four years and my brand new girlfriend (four months and counting).
Poly is like an old lawnmower: it can be almost impossible to get it started, but once you get it going it’ll pretty much run forever. All of us went through jealousy, self-doubt, loneliness, anger, and all the rest in our own ways, but with a whole lot of love and patience (plus a big dose of good luck) we’re now in a wonderfully stable and happy-making situation. It helps that all of us are naturally low-drama people who prefer to sort problems immediately and positively than to nurse grudges.
A dear friend of mine once said that polyamory is a crash course in self-improvement. So many of the things we can let slide in monogamy – jealousy, codependency, insecurity, and more – become unmanageable in a poly situation. If you find yourself falling into poly, you need to either work hard to be a stronger, more independent person, or get the hell out of there.
So yeah, it can be really hard, but for me at least it has been incredibly enriching. I love all of my partners and I would never give up this lifestyle.
wow, thank you for being so open and honest, and having a pic, i know this is the life im meant to live. It sounds amazing and beautiful and im so pleased to hear a wonderful loving story like yours, thank you, love and blessings xxx
“polygamy, which is a patriarchal construct where only men can have more than one sexual partner”
This is not true, polygamy is just marriage between multiple people. That single men who are having multiple wives in this type of marriage, is merely occurring doesn’t mean the other way around doesn’t exist…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23840824
Cheers
The reason you find polyamory so “problematic” is because seemingly you are in it to be part of some cool in crowd you perceive the poly community to be. Not only is that highly offensive, that you see someone’s preferred relationship style to be a fad or rebellion rather than a mere expression of who they are, but it says something about you if you choose to begin romantic and/or sexual relationships to feel accepted by the “rebels”. You say you like how polyamory supports feminism; it surely isn’t in line with feminism to sleep with people to feel accepted. In fact, feminism encourages people to make choices about their sexuality that are appropriate for the person they are, not the person they are made to feel they should be. You can be pro poly without practicing poly, and if you really feel that polyamorous relationships are problematic, maybe they aren’t as appropriate for you as you think.
Thanks to those who shared their experiences so openly nd with integrity. I have been in one poly relationship of 25 years and another concurrent for 13 years, and I think that all Frances’ practical points are correct from my experience.
However there are a few observations I’d like to make:
1. Poly is not for everyone, nor will it be when we all get more spiritually evolved. Without meaning to, the position that poly is more evolved demeans monogamy, and I know some monogamous types that make me look like a Neandethal. You can be feminist, egalitarian and monogamous. I’ve met many great people who simply choose to direct their energies elsewhere.
2. As someone has just pointed out on this thread, you don’t need to be spiritually evolved to be successfully poly. You need time, energy, considerable self awareness, communication skills, time mqnagement skills, an ethical basis… and NOT to be an arsehole. Areseholes abound in both mono and poly circles, the trick is to spot one early enough if you are having a relatinship with one – this is actually quite hard as arseholes often present well and we REALLY want things to work so we go the extra mile.
Ha, what a great comment. You made me laugh. Especially the part about the arsehole thing. 😀 I love how you don’t say that POLY is THE WAY to be. We all are different and we all have different phases in life. It might even be that some poly people at some time or another swing back to monogamy because they met someone who they fully wanted to commit to. Maybe it is words like poly and mono that divide us. Maybe we should all just be open and go with the flow. Much love & thanks for your wonderful comment. Adina
well said xxx
I’ve been polyamorous for about twenty-five years, and currently have five long-term relationships.
Does successful polyamory require good communication skills? Yes. Does it require flexibility, compassion, and self-knowledge? You bet. Does it require “evolution” or “spirituality”? Absolutely not.
All the things that polyamory requires–self-actualization, communication, empathy, and so on–are learned skills. There’s nothing particularly magical or “evolved” about them. Granted, they are skills we don’t teach people very well, so there are a lot of folks running around who haven’t learned them, but there’s still nothing especially magic about them.
In a way, saying that you have to be “evolved” or “spiritual” to have these skills is a bit of a cop-out. It excuses not developing them; “well, I don’t have very good communication or conflict resolution skills, but it’s not my fault–most human beings just haven’t evolved that far.”
Nonsense. Like riding a bike, fixing a car, or playing pool, these skills are simply a matter of practice.
Now, I’m not saying everyone is polyamorous. Far from it; different people want different things from relationship, and no one model works for everyone.
But everyone can learn to be better at these skills. And they are NOT poly skills; they are relationship skills! Learning them will make any relationship, monogamous or polyamorous, better.
Awesome thoughts. I too feel that these skills are just like training a muscle. Yet going this path it seems that I have to confront myself with very old patterns within myself that need to be resolved like anger, insecurities etc. Thanks bro, Adina
Thank you, for your comments, yes i tend to agree, although i think the spiritual or evolved comments were meant to be something along the lines of personal development, I know my path to growth has been long and varied and i am more capable now than i ever would have been 10 years ago to move forward successfully without my growth and learning i have and continue to acheive now. But i understand your comment. I think its just a wiillingness to grow and understand humanity, which i think we coulsd all do with a big dose of poly, momo or otherwise love and blessings xxx
I’m sorry I can only prove you right. I have been in a primary partnership for 18 years. AS my partner evolved more and more into kinky and possibly gay, struggling with sex addiction – we’ve tried exploring poly to meet his sexual needs and preferences.
Poly could work for me, because as I enter menopause I’m not particularly sexual, so him having another woman who meets that could be good for me. And I’m kind of tantric vanilla – make love under the open stars like a wild pair of wolves is about as fun as I get, slow meditative presence to whos here and now rather than a slew of fantasy is my speed.
The worst part is that he loves the concept and wants the freedome and is woefully under developed or committed to the accountability, the planning, the win win.
Thus I’ve held the candle for trust and connection through 2 years now of weekends of hurt heart and dashed trust, where the new person ( there has been over 4) gets all the weekend get aways, the dinners, the premium free time, the premium of energy and the premium of interest and the premium of empathy and caring, respect and consideration.
I think that is part of what you missed. That empathy and care for the partners that have been there a long time.
We were exposed recently to unsafe sex because of a man he and his new girlfriend chose to play with. In the heat of their impulsive desire – there was no consideration of getting health stats on the table. (ANd I just found out he had no standard for the new girlfriends transparency re health stats either and he’s been with her now for 5 months)
Turns out the guy had herpes and multiple other partners and lots of risk for hep due to a prevalence for ass play. After the wild weekend – two actually – I was sexually intimate with my partner of 18 years and exposed to the new girlfriends entire sexual history and this guy they played with, with silly me trusting my partners disclosures and accounts of his new girlfriend and dom play guy with of course the massively hung uncut cock.
As it was revealed that the guy is pretty selfish, witheld all pertinent info – all the care and concern for danger has been for his new girlfriend, not a lick of compassion and empathy for moi. (Yes I’m all over the testing and taking care of myself)
Yep pretty angry now and a really bad taste in my mouth for people who spout how wonderful Poly is but are not committed to the personal accountability, mindfulness, compassion, fairness, commitment to win win and most importantly restraint, slow and steady observation and assessment necessary for successful loving of multiples, when most of us fail terribly at loving one.
I hear ya. I think that is what Frances was referring to. It needs a certain spiritually and intellectually evolved type of person to step into a polyamorous relationship.
I hope all will be good for you, love! Hugs, Adina
P.s. Would u still continue with Poly after this event? If so, would u change something?
I’m sorry to tell you, but it sounds to me like the motives for making your relationship polyamorous seem very ‘wrong’. If your husband has an addiction to sex, I suppose this problem should be addressed, instead of opening up the relationship, because it is more than you can or would like to give.
I cannot recommend anyone turning to polyamory for anyone other than themselves. Also, polyAMORY is about loving multiple people, not about having sex with more. (Of course, this can be the case, but doesn’t have to.)
I turned to polyamory, because I feel sincere love for so many people and I want to share this freely. Honesty is one of the most important parts of it. Being completely honest in everything, not even holding back on painful parts. This is necessary in order to have the trust you need between people. Also being completely, harshly honest towards myself; why do I do this and this? What is my motive for this? Why does this feel painful and why does this feel good? Am I being honest? Am I doing this with pure intentions, or because I need a confirmation of some sorts?
Don’t u worry, a lot of ppl nowadays is using that concept to do the same. I had a poly bf that was pretty concerned when I dated another guy. This ppl like suffering and drama, but we have rights to take care of our bodies and not expose ourselves to risky situations just because it’s hype or cool nowadays. I hope u cut off this guy and find a love who looks for the same than u and is available and not scared of being JUST with u, and will find u are enough for him.
>> My sense is that we have not evolved enough as a species in terms of emotional intelligence to be successful with poly relationships.
Considering the divorce rates and “serial monogamy”/dating practices, we’re plenty successful with non-monogamy and not so much with monogamy.
>> It also means that you have the willingness and capacity to hang in there when the going gets tough.
No more or less than in any other relationship model. See comment to other above.
>> It also requires lots and lots of time and a great ability to plan and schedule.
Yes, dating more than one requires more calendar-ing than dating more than one. So does having more than one child. So does having more than one friend. So does having more than one job.
>> Most people find it too difficult to manage their chemicals.
And that’s exactly why monogamy has been a capital-f failure for many. There’s no room in the typical monogamy-based model to talk about, express, or otherwise vent about those NRE experiences. That means we go through that “that must be love because I no longer feel that here” period without any room in which to understand why.
We need to see polyamory not as something novel, special, and harder than monogamy but as what we’ve actually been capable of and doing all along.
Hi Tammi, thanks for giving this other perspective on Polyamory. I believe this article speaks alot to people who are still in the Monogamy-Paradigm. At least it speaks to me a lot, but I do want to open up and see all your points.
Change is tough & takes time. Especially with something so delicate as relationships and love. Most of us have been taught to live and love a certain way from the time we were born.
Unlearning is one of the hardest things ever. But it s so worth it.
Again thank u. Much love t you, Adina