Polyamory: The New Monogamy?
The opposite of monogamy -- quick. Polygamy, right? Wrong. Polygamy is when one man has many wives (often with bad handmade dresses and a fierce need for some eyebrow threading). The correct answer is: polyamory -- literally, "having many loves." Doesn't sound bad in theory - lots of love, right? However, it seems that monogamy is something we hold in very high regard. Before you start your nasty email to me, calling me a home-wrecking "whore with a pen" who wants your husband, let's make it clear that I am writing this in response to hundreds of my clinical patients over the years who have been in my office asking if it's normal to be monogamous. "Why is it so hard?" they ask. "Does a long monogamous marriage equal a good marriage?" My personal opinion is irrelevant, really. We discuss boundaries, truth, guilt, safety, respect - the things your Maury Povich trailer park swingers tend not to do on day-time TV.
I talked about this with Neil Cavuto on Fox TV, who sneered at my answer that "it's better to have a truthful relationship, where both people are happy, and that is not monogamous, than one that is supposedly monogamous but is full of lies and guilt." Or a monogamous relationship that is bored and resentful but, gosh darn it, we are the emblem of a successful marriage even if we haven't had sex with each other since World War I.
While I've sat across from couples that are either "healing from infidelity" or negotiating kooky rules like "no kissing on the lips or hook-ups in the same zip code," fact is, thanks to the Internet, there are a lot of "updates" happening related to "swinging." But let's stick with the term "polyamorous," which sounds more romantic and less like a circus act. I finally interrupted one patient to ask where the polyamory bulletin board was in the library. This young, professional Manhattanite scoffed, "Ever go out with a guy and --sure you know you can relate as far as movies, books, three things you can't live without, you play coy for a date or two, then sleep with him, only to find that he doesn't like oral sex (and you do), and he loves anal sex (and you don't)?" She didn't pause for an answer, thankfully.
The answer? Rather than Match.com or Nerve.com, a more 'adult' site asks those questions and cuts out a lot of time consuming dinners and chit chat that might lead to the fact that he insists on full Brazilians, you won't give up your landing strip. "Lets face it," she adds "Patterson's 'bilateral cheating' was actually an open marriage."
Sites like Adultfriendfinder.com and Passion.com actually have their fair percentage of singles looking for another single who doesn't mind cutting out the anticipation of not knowing genital anatomy size ("Hell, everyone else waited and all that it's gotten them is a 52% divorce rate and desperate housewives. We have to make some new rules").
In the name of science and being up on my pop culture (and widening my vocabulary to include terms like bi-curious and "soft" swap), I logged on. If only our voting system could have a small percentage of the organization, rules, and clarity of these relationships! "Have some manners and call or write my wife the next day" lists one man in a couple who swing together. That sounds reasonable. "If you don't have basic hygiene down, don't bother emailing me." Again, something I've wanted to say to a blind date or two. Testimonials with accolades and even photo albums make the whole idea very nonchalant. For those who don't want skin-on-skin contact, plenty of members only want chats and video-camming - though I still haven't managed to visualize the tap-and-wank coordination. I'm sure there's a trick. Plenty of married men and women state staunchly, "I'm married and happy, not planning to leave my significant other." Some add that their "other" knows and takes the "don't ask don't tell stance"; others have elaborated a pretty damn sophisticated plan that only shows pictures of body parts and gives alternate email addresses. In most, I'm glad to see, condoms and safe sex aren't a question, they often a non-negotiable.
Is there a darker flip side to this, one where sexual addiction takes over or significant others find those cams and want a divorce? I'm sure. But many many other scenarios exist. "A guy I met last night has been happily married for 14 years," my patient quipped. "That is more than anyone I know!"
We didn't get to talk about how these experiences are making her question old rules and her own views of love and marriage (or singlehood) yet. She ends the session asking rhetorically, "Once you go polyamorous, can you ever go back? Do you want to?"
Don't shoot the messenger. Again, I don't want to sleep with your husband, or wife, or both. Shoot me an email with your opinion.
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I'm lucky if I can get ONE sexual partner, let alone many! Am I the exception, here?
In my experience, women tend to use sex as a weapon - usually by withholding it until she gets her way. Ironically, as a man, I've never really gotten that much pleasure from sex - usually, it's just to get relief. (Of course, the fact that my [now ex-]girlfriends tended to just lay there through the whole thing might have something to do with it, too.)
I don't think I could handle polyamory - hanging onto one girlfriend is hard enough, let alone trying to please multiple women.
You are dating the wrong women... go find yourself a nice poly lady and she will show you a thing or two.
Actually polygamy doesn't specifically mean one man with many wives, it just means being married to more than one person, regardless of gender. Polyandry is multiple husbands and polygyny is more than one wife.
My husband and I have a "look but don't touch" policy. He gets to ogle all the legs he want -- I'll even point out choice young ladies in miniskirts in case he misses them -- and I get my romance novels. We watch porn together too. I've told him it's all right to cheat on me with men so long as he wears a condom, and he answered that it's okay for me to cheat on him with other women so long as it's caught on camera. It's open and refreshing to talk about sex with him in this way, since no amount of women's magazine articles ever mentioned that discussing sex candidly with your partner is the grounds for a fruitful relationship. Those who keep a stretchy leash are less likely to choke their dog or have him run away.
For those who crave adventure, get bored easily and seek out variety in life, loving the same person is like eating the same food. It gets old. Domesticity is only normal for boring people happy with routine.
I'm surprised no one has brought up bonobos in this discussion. They often use intercourse as a greeting AND as a way to defuse tense social situations. The "act" lasts all of one to two minutes at the most and all is well with the world again when consummated.
Supposedly, according to the PBS shows I've watched about bonobos, there was a more human like version of the bonobo before homo sapiens dominated and wiped out the species (as well as others). Homo sapiens were not the only human species to evolve from primates.
We are more like our gorilla and chimp friends, who tend to self-destruct and not advance due to jealousy and other emotions. In fact, the dominance of emotions rather than analysis in primates is why many scientists believe they lag behind homo sapiens in organizational advancement. It's this aspect of primate brain development that constitutes the 2% difference between them and us.
It's all really fascinating.
And for those of you who don't think women, many women, don't like sex as much as men or as often as men---time for you to do a little more research. It's an absolute myth. Just like the myth that ALL men like and want sex all the time. We are individuals. All of us. And we all take our place along the continuum.
I joke: My wife and I are in a same-sex relationship. Every time, the same sex.
Thank goodness for this article. I have had a very difficult time with this concept of marriage and monogomy. I married in my mid-thirties to a wonderful man. However, after 13 years of marriage, regardless of new things we tried in bed, sex grew boring for me. While the things may have been new, the bottom line was, it was still with the same person. I still loved my husband, but longed for someone new in bed. To me, monogomy is akin to having to eat vanilla ice cream my whole life. I had a difficult time understanding why marriage meant I could never sleep with someone else again even though I didn't want to divorce my husband or so-called "cheat."
Luckily for me, an long-time friend with bonuses looked me up and we decided to get together now and then. This has proven not only good for my psyche, but my marriage. I no longer feel resentful. After years of feeling I am the only one who feels this way, I'm relieved to know I am not alone.
Um. That's nice. All for it. However, does your husband know? If not, you need to pony up the truth. Honesty is everything in a marriage (well, any realationship, really). You'll hate yourself if your husband does not know and then finds out. Really, he has a right to know, and you have a duty to make sure he knows.
I won't kid you, it wasn't easy telling him that I had heard from a friend from my past. I was honest in telling my husband I wanted to see him again, for "old times sake", but wouldn't because I feared we would end up in bed together. He thought it over and said, "Go ahead and try it, and that means sleeping with him. But if you start having feelings for him that's it. Something has to end." I also had to agree to let him have that same arrangement as well. I agreed.
As it turned out, re-connecting with my friend made me realize why we were never meant to be together and why my husband was so special. Nonetheless, the sex was good. The best part for my husband, the whole experience revitalized our sex life. Prior to the reunion with my friend, I treated sex with my husband as "part of my job because I was his wife." But now, it's something I enjoy again.
I don't get together all that often with my friend since we don't live that close. It's just enough to break the monotony. We have had this arrangement for two years and so far so good. But who knows what the future will bring.
Swinging and polyamory are not interchangable! At least not to swingers.
Swinging is defined by those who do it as having multiple sexual partners while in an emotionally monogamous relationship. Swingers are not trying to juggle multiple emotional relationships; they love one person and one person only. They believe in spending the rest of your life with the same person; they just don't believe it's natural to have sex with only one person when we have so many desires.
Polyamorous couples are emotionally involved with multiple partners. Having a wife and a girlfriend means you are polyamorous; if you and your wife have a threesome with a friend that makes you a swinger. Neither one of these is monogamy, but they are pretty different lifestyles!
I have to say, between our need for emotional stability and our diverse sexual desires, I think swinging is the best compromise (not that it's for everyone!). It's more taboo than polyamory though, I guess because our society thinks sex without emotions is WRONG.....
Thank you for clarifying that.
I thought that sex without deeper emotional connection was deemed acceptable (although not achievable for all) as long as everyone involved knew the boundaries; then again, I was hanging out with older (than me; they were all pretty young) military personnel, so that's probably not a good gauge of the "real world".
5/4/08
6:01pm
Portland, OR
If I have to put up with that, I'd rather be alone.
Adult, single people are independent beings and should do as they please unless they're in a monogamous, "committed" relationship. Without lying or leading someone one.
Adult, married people who want to do as they please.... what was the purpose of marrying? Aside from the case of a marriage for other than love & commitment (financial arrangement, immigration, some other perq.)
Just wondering.
Well, we have all heard the adage:
"A man works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done."
But put more wives on the job and the work can get done.
And if the husbands help as well... then there is more time for other things for everyone in the relationship.
Great article, but I think that people are not monogamous. Religion (what else) has imposed mostly monogamy for control purposes and the state for financial purposes. All you have to do is read the paper on a daily basis to see that what we preach and we practice varies.
It is true that the internet has made things simpler and so now the numbers have exploded, if we everybody was so "honest" with each other how come we have George Washington black children, John F. Kennedy fling with M. Monroe etc. etc. etc.( you add your own examples there are too many of them)?
We are polyamoric and we follow the "don't ask don't tell policy" because most people like to hide their head in the sand.
If you are happily are married with your partner for amtilion years (and you don't lie) good for you, your are the exception. The MAJORITY of couples have (or considered having) another relationship in their marriage/relationship. Just look at the numbers of divorce if nothing else 1 in 2 !!!
We need to grow out of the hypocracy of pretending to have "one relationship" and be realistic that we all have needs that sometimes are not met by our partners.
Thomas Jefferson had children with his Black slave Sally Hemmings.
George Washington apparently did not father children by his slaves. One family has made the claim but no known evidence exists. Washington was likely sterile, as he never impregnated his wife of 41 years, although she had four children with her first husband.
No, I don't believe polyamory is the new monogamy. However, with so many articles about it lately, someone must want it to be.
That's what I was thinking... Some editor's saying to his wife right now...
Read yet another article on polyamory today sweetheart. Maybe their on to something!
You and Jenny Block are wrong about the definition of polygamy. It can just as easily refer to "polyandry" (having multiple husbands) as "polygyny" having multiple wives. It's just that polyandry is so much rarer (i.e. I've never heard of any actual cases of it).
As for polyamory -- call me an interested sceptic. I've seen several attempts at such relationships by friends and acquaintances, and all of them failed when one partner began to feel neglected or one person became too closely involved with a partner outside the "core" relationship.
For myself, my only attempt at an open relationship failed the moment I saw another man's teeth marks on my partner's breast. That brought the reality of the situation home to me with a sickening crunch and I suddenly realized I'm just not built for that kind of thing. Good luck to anyone who is.
"It's just that polyandry is so much rarer (i.e. I've never heard of any actual cases of it)."
I know of four families which have one woman and multiple men. In all of them the female is an Alpha, and the men Betas.
"I've seen several attempts at such relationships by friends and acquaintances, and all of them failed..."
How many of your friends have failed in their Mono relationships? I am willing to bet almost all of them are not still with the first person they started dating. Why should Poly, which involves more people/complexity, be expected to do better? At the same time I am in my 12th year with my current primary, and my 5th with one secondary, and 1 year with the other. My primary has been with her secondary for 4 years. So, it can work if you can get the right mixtures.
It's kind of funny, but in the circles I run in most of the double-digit-long relationships are either open, Poly or both.
The only place I've heard of polyandry in practice was from a Tibetan friend of mine who said that Tibetan aristocrats practiced bothh polyandry and polygyny. That is, when a woman married into the family, all of the men (her husband's brothers, father, uncles) could also sleep with her. In effect, all of the women who joined the family were married to all of the men. (My friend's biolgical father was her nominal grandfather.) I've seen very little in print about this. My friend said that the purpose was to keep all of the landholdings in the family without splitting them up into smaller and smaller pieces or disposessing some of the decendants.
If polyamory, polygamy, polyandry, or monogamy don't provide the big bang you desire, take a
look at the article just above this one. Scientists are ready to recreate the biggest bang of all and let's keep fingers crossed we'll survive it's climactic jolt.
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