Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners (16 page)

Equity means treating others with fairness, and while fairness is always a judgment call, it suggests that all parties have equal power for determining the quality of their lives even though they may have different roles, duties, or responsibilities. Equity is characteristic of what Riane Eisler has called

“partnership culture,” as contrasted with “dominator culture,” in which it is assumed that one gender has the right to control the other gender, with violence if necessary. Where equity is present, one person may still assume more leadership than the other(s), or different people may assume
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leadership in different arenas or decide to rotate responsibilities, but the process of making decisions is one that is mutually agreed on as beneficial for everyone. This style has sometimes been described as “power with”

rather than “power over,” or mutually empowering.

Now let’s take a look at some relationships that illustrate how the form of the relationship is less important than the previously discussed ethical principles in determining the value and impact of the relationship.

Vic and Christy had been more or less happily married for twelve years when they met Alice and Jack at a party. Christy is the stay-at-home mom of two young children, and Vic travels extensively for his job. His frequent absences were the biggest stress on their relationship with Christy feeling resentful about being left alone with the children and Vic missing his family while on the road.

Alice and Jack had also been married for nearly twelve years and had two children the same ages as Vic and Christy’s. Jack ran his successful computer business from home with administrative support from Alice, so the two were together almost all the time. At the time they met Vic and Christy, Alice was considering divorce because she was fed up with Jack’s verbal abuse and feared his explosive temper but was even more afraid of the financial consequences of leaving her husband.

The two couples became increasingly close, and their children became best friends. Christy and the kids often spent time with Alice and her family while Vic was away on business and soon found herself falling in love with Jack. One weekend, Christy suggested that the foursome explore sexually together, and they all enjoyed the experience so much that it soon became a regular part of their interaction. All was well until Vic became aware of the depth of Christy’s feelings for Jack and at the same time found that he was reluctant to open his heart more fully to Alice, who clearly preferred Vic to her own husband. Sex with Alice and Jack was fine with Vic, but he felt that love should be reserved for spouses. He valued his family life and his role as a father and didn’t want to play with fire. He wanted to break off the relationship with Alice and Jack entirely, but Christy refused and instead suggested that they all consult me.

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Christy and Jack had developed a sexual chemistry so strong that it was nearly palpable. Not only was Vic afraid that Christy might leave him for Jack, but he feared that casual friends would suspect that they were having an affair and was angry about their lack of discretion. Christy’s reassurances that she had no intention of breaking up their family fell on deaf ears.

For the moment, this quadrangle was meeting all her needs, and she was convinced that if only Vic would stop resisting, everyone would live happily ever after. Initially, I worked just with Christy and Vic to address Vic’s jealousy and Christy’s old resentments about feeling dominated by Vic. Christy and Vic made rapid progress in resolving these issues, but when Jack and Alice failed to follow through on making an appointment for themselves and when all four were unable to find a time to come in together, I sensed that a happy and healthy foursome was not a likely prospect.

After some months, Alice and Jack decided to seek help with their relationship. Alice was struggling to forgive Jack for his past behavior.

She appreciated that he behaved in a more loving and supportive way when Christy was around, but at the same time she was hurt and angry about the verbal abuse he still dished out to her when they were alone.

She often vented her frustration privately with Vic, adding fuel to Vic’s animosity toward Jack for capturing Christy’s heart. Vic’s instincts were at least partly correct. He and Christy might not want to swap spouses, but Alice and Jack certainly did. Christy’s vision was that of a four-way group marriage, and while it
was
a good match in many ways, Vic’s doubts were well founded. Vic and Christy’s relationship was reasonably functional, but Alice and Jack’s was not. Had they swapped spouses, they almost certainly would have found the same dynamics showing up with their new partners.

This vignette is a good example of unhealthy monogamy leading to unhealthy polyamory. The sex was good, but the emotional chaos became a downward spiral that soon wore everyone out. Christy’s vision of including others into one big happy family to create support for herself and her children while Vic was out of town on business was a healthy impulse.

With a less dysfunctional couple, it might have worked, but her sexual and romantic attraction to Jack blinded her to the reality that Jack and Alice’s marriage was falling apart. For Jack and Alice, polyamory was an avoidance of their issues, not a solution. Soon after the two couples stopped seeing each other, Alice began an affair with a recently divorced single father. She divorced Jack a year later.

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Both Janice and Peter were happily married to their respective spouses when they met at a party for nonmonogamous couples. At first, they thought their attraction was primarily sexual, but gradually the relationship expanded into a full-blown love affair. Peter and his wife Stacy felt very secure in their marriage of ten years, and Stacy was happy to have Peter occupied while she pursued her passion for ice skating. Janice’s husband, Ian, was fully engaged in growing his prosperous company and felt strongly about supporting Janice’s freedom to love others. With some trepidation, Ian welcomed the challenge of overcoming his own feelings of jealousy and envy. All four were young, attractive, successful professionals who were content with their lives and optimistic about their future. Both couples were committed to their families, had clear agreements about how to handle outside relationships, and placed a high priority on maintaining a satisfying marriage.

As time passed, Janice and Peter found themselves facing difficulties that had never emerged in their harmonious and comfortable marriages.

After almost breaking up because of repeated conflicts, they sought me out for help. It soon became apparent to me that Janice and Peter had found in each other a fabulous mirror for their unresolved childhood issues that simply wasn’t present with their highly compatible spouses. From the vantage point of marital stability, they were fortunate that the stormy, passionate, and richly productive quality of their interaction had shown up outside their marriages.

I quickly pointed out to Janice and Peter that working out their conflicts was strictly voluntary. Each of them had full and rewarding lives independently of each other. They could simply stop seeing each other and find other growth opportunities that were less challenging and easier to manage. After considering this option, they decided to go for it and use the emotional upheaval that each triggered in the other as a starting point for healing their childhood wounds.

Stacy and Ian had done their best to be supportive of their partners, but both were relieved when Janice and Peter’s relationship began to stabilize.

Stacy and Ian recognized the value for Janice and Peter of resolving their conflicts but were getting disturbed by the increasing drama that was rippling into their respective marriages. Neither Stacy nor Ian wanted to pull
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rank and ask their spouses to break off their relationship, though they knew that such a request would be complied with. Once Janice and Peter began taking responsibility for their own healing, Stacy and Ian could happily embrace the situation.

These four people are good examples of people for whom polyamory is a workable choice. Not only did each couple have a highly functional marriage, but each individual had a variety of personality traits and skills that are necessary for polyamorous relating, as we shall see in the next chapter.

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ost people never stop to ask themselves whether their personal characteristics make them better suited for monogamy or for polyamory or for each at different stages in life. While many young people growing up today have more awareness than previous generations that they do have options when it comes to their choice of lovestyle, it’s still unusual to make a conscious choice whether to practice monogamy. Even more unusual is to come to an understanding that polyamory is not an identity that dictates having multiple partners but rather a fluid process of checking in with oneself to see what feels appropriate with a given person in a given situation. Instead, we tend to be influenced by the conditioning we receive in the families we grow up in or the prevailing social norms. This holds true whether we imitate our parents or vow never to be like them and deliberately do the opposite.

Ann’s father had many illicit affairs. Ann’s mother suffered silently.

When Ann was seven, they divorced with much hostility. Ann was determined to have a solid monogamous marriage with a husband who would never leave her or cheat on her. Jeff’s father also had many illicit affairs that his mother pretended not to notice while enjoying a variety of sports and activities at her church. When Jeff was seven, his parents peacefully divorced, and his father soon remarried. Jeff modeled himself on his father and usually had several girlfriends at once but decided to always tell the
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truth about being nonmonogamous. When he married, he chose a woman who also wanted an open marriage. Cindy’s parents were unhappily married for fifty years. They rarely had sex with each other or with anyone else as far as Cindy knew. Cindy tried hard to find a husband but couldn’t seem to meet the right man and began to wonder if she was a lesbian. Then she became involved with a bisexual couple and happily settled into an open triad.

While heterosexual monogamous marriage is still the ideal in much of the world, subcultures where polyamory, bisexuality, or homosexuality are the norm are increasingly visible and gaining in respectability. More and more people are deciding to remain single or to live together without getting married, especially if they don’t plan to have children. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, there is a new generation who grew up in nontraditional families where gender roles, sexual orientation, and/or relational orientation were much more fluid than in the past. While the lifestyle choices of these young adults have not yet been studied scientifically, it’s my impression that in general they are much more comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. As we will see in chapter 8, many of them still gravitate toward heterosexual and/or monogamous relationships, but they are more willing to experiment with different kinds of relationships and have many of the skills and personality traits that contribute to successful polyamorous relationships.

Some mental health professionals have long held the unfounded opinion that polyamorous people are disturbed in some way, and some try to dissuade clients from practicing polyamory or attribute their relationship problems to their rejection of monogamy. But these judgments often turn out to be a reflection of personal and societal bias. Those practicing polyamory share the same psychological problems as the rest of the population, but a number of studies conducted in the 1980s found no differences in psychological symptoms or quality of relationships between those practicing polyamory and those who were monogamous.1

While the polyamorous personality has not been found to be pathological on the whole and while there is much diversity among those classified as polyamorous, many polyamorous people do seem to share certain qualities, and it’s my impression that certain personality types are more likely than others to choose polyamory (whether or not they identify as polyamorous).

Some of these factors may have as much to do with the personality traits of those willing to make choices that do not conform to social norms as with
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polyamory itself, but at this time, both variables are generally involved in making polyamorous choices. In addition, the factors predicting compatibility among those in multipartner relationships are somewhat different from those relevant to dyadic relationships. In the absence of research that would address all these questions, this chapter presents a combination of my own clinical and anecdotal observations as well as a synthesis of the ideas of other authors and researchers in the field.

As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, there are many different styles of polyamorous relationships. Open marriage, intimate networks, and group marriages appeal to different types of people and require different strengths and skills. It’s difficult to identify a single individual who represents such a diverse universe, so I will share a few composite pictures.

Elaine is thirty-five and has three children, the youngest still in diapers, and works part time as a clothing designer. She’s been married to William for ten years, and for the past four years she’s also had a close relationship with Timothy. “I almost decided to stop seeing Timothy after Julia was born, but in the end I realized that I receive so much from him, it’s worth the extra time and energy. I couldn’t do it without a full time nanny and William’s support, and even so it can be overwhelming.” Elaine is an outgoing, curvaceous woman with soulful eyes whose coolly confident air and quick wit attract attention wherever she goes. She grew up in a “normally neurotic” traditional nuclear family, met William while still in college, and reports that it was love at first sight for both of them. “It was originally William’s idea to open up our marriage about five years ago. He’s both practical and idealistic and believes that if we want to continue creating a great relationship for the rest of our lives, we need to allow each other freedom. I agreed to give it a try.” Elaine and William started by exploring swinging, but before long, she fell in love with Timothy. Elaine says that they made some good friends in the swing community but that she and William soon tired of recreational sex and realized that they preferred relationships with more substance. “We realized polyamory is a better fit for us than swinging. William has fallen for a few single women, but they’ve all been reluctant to dive in with a married man. I’m lucky Timothy is already married and open and happy with things the way they are,” she sighs.