Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners (30 page)

as a reason for chosing polyamory also supports Diamond’s hypothesis.

Amanda, whose story we considered previously, is a good example of a woman puzzled by the concept of a fixed identity that she has trouble locating herself within and who uses polyamory to try out different possibilities.

The feminine affinity for sexual fluidity would also go a long way toward explaining why virtually all the leadership in today’s polyamory movement has come from women. The absence, up until now, of a theoretical framework that addresses the concept of sexual fluidity also explains why it’s been so difficult for the “fluid” definition of polyamory that I put forward in the early 1990s emphasizing “letting love flow,” whatever that ends up looking like, rather than forcing it into a predetermined form, to be taken seriously. Instead, definitions of polyamory that focus on a particular form for relationships or on the more obvious multipartner aspects of polyamory and that place polyamory in opposition to monogamy have most often been highlighted.

Cardosa, Correia, and Capella put it this way: “Let’s begin with love then, with love’s potential to destabilize sexual behaviors in women. The result, we posit, is that it becomes less and less relevant whether polyamory is truly (ontologically) about love or about sex, but that polyamory focuses on love, on feelings, as its main drive, as its discourse of election that it uses to convey meaning. And by doing so, it gains the power to directly address the questions and possibilities raised by sexual fluidity. . . . By defending and setting as its standard the possibility of nonexclusive relations and nonexclusive feelings, polyamory seems to provide a whole different background in which to live and try out different love configurations. And in a way, this contradicts to a point the effects of social and situational convergence either towards a heterosexual or a homosexual stable and normative identity.”3

In other words, polyamory challenges the whole notion of normative sexual and relational identities, whether they be homosexual, heterosexual, monogamous, or nonmonogamous. In fact, this was the original intent of the polyamory movement, although it now is at risk for being seen as either a purely sexual diversion or a new normative standard that people may try to conform to, reject, or experience as a crisis of identity.

Consider the experience of Margaret, who came of age during the sexual revolution. Taking on a lesbian identity was a very deliberate radical and
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political action for her. She eagerly embraced the sexual fluidity concept when it was presented to her, saying, “I’ve been in a committed lesbian relationship for twenty-six years, and I have no intention of changing that.

For the past few years I’ve been exploring polyamory and bisexuality, but I still consider myself a lesbian. It’s very confusing.”

Paradoxically, it’s the very concept of sexual fluidity that, when incorporated into a polyamorous orientation, allows for the relative stability of a new paradigm flexible enough to include many diverse expressions of sexualove both within one individual at different times and across individuals—at least until the next paradigm shift comes around.

People often ask me if I still “believe” in polyamory or if I still want polyamorous relationships after all these years, and I always say that it depends on how they are defining polyamory. I can’t imagine ever going back to a way of relating in which I give up the freedom to love whom I love or where someone else dictates whom I can and can’t be sexual with. I can easily imagine choosing to focus with just one person whose presence I enjoy above all others. If this person were someone who could meet me on every level and who also chose to focus with me, I doubt very much that I’d have any interest in other sexual relationships. But to me, this continues to be polyamory because it’s still fluid—the possibility is still there to openly have additional partners whether or not I actually do so.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE POLYS GONE?

You may be asking yourself, if there are so many polyamorous people that they might not even be in the minority, why are they not more visible? One reason is that so many polys have not come out—even to themselves. The concepts of coming out and being in the closet exist in the first place because a homosexual can easily present a public appearance of heterosexuality and go undetected unless she or he
chooses
to reveal him-or herself.

However, in order to have a sexual encounter, a homosexual must come out at least to his or her prospective partner. In fact, the term
coming out
was originally used to refer to a first-time same-gender experience.

Someone who is nonmonogamous, however, can have sexual encounters without coming out to his or her partners as long as group sex is not involved. And the vast majority of polys rarely if ever engage in group sex.

The polyamorous person is in somewhat the same situation as the bisexual
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who can, if he or she chooses, pass as straight with an opposite-gender lover and pass as gay or lesbian with a same-gender lover. And it is no coincidence that, until the past few decades, bisexuals have been pretty much invisible in both the heterosexual and the homosexual worlds. Sadly, one of the greatest fears that some bisexuals have about coming out is that it will be assumed that they’re not monogamous.

Because polys can remain safely hidden while satisfying many sexual and emotional needs, they may lack the motivation to disclose their polyamorous feelings. They may also avoid coming out to themselves by telling themselves that they’re trying to choose between several partners and have no intention of continuing to relate with more than one. It’s easy for polys to imagine that they don’t really
want
to have more than one lover at the same time; they’re just having a hard time making up their mind—a very hard time. Or they may tell themselves and others that they don’t really care for one of their partners; they’re just there out of habit or obligation, or it’s just a temporary fling.

Dana is twenty-one and a senior at the University of California. She doesn’t consider herself polyamorous, but she often has more than one lover. This is how she sees it: “I’m not seriously involved with anyone at the moment. I have several ‘friends with benefits,’ but they’re not real relationships. We’re not thinking about getting married or anything; they’re just good friends.”

In my day, these kinds of relationships were called sexual friendships.

Among baby boomers like myself, they have proven to sometimes be very enduring, emotionally intimate, and stable, outlasting many marriages or coexisting with them overtly or covertly. In fact, it’s my observation that it is precisely because these friendships are not burdened with all the expectations and conditioning associated with marriage or with coupling up without benefit of marriage that they are often less volatile and more intimate than the relationship between spouses. Perhaps it will evolve differently with the younger generation, but clearly friends with benefits are somewhere in that middle ground between monogamous marriage and an anonymous one-night stand. Dana might not consider it polyamory, but it fits my definition.

It’s natural for people to be reluctant to admit that what they want is something that’s widely held to be immoral and indecent—not to mention impossible. But trying to repress, lie about, rationalize, or otherwise deny one’s polyamorous nature can be very damaging to oneself, to loved ones,
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and the rest of the world. As we enter the twenty-first century, academic theorists, primarily in countries outside the United States, have begun to address the harmful impacts of heteronormative and mononormative social constructs and are attempting to introduce polyamory into the intellectual discourse on relationships, but mononormativity still prevails for the most part.

THE PRICE OF STAYING IN THE CLOSET

To go through life with the sense that one is guarding a dirty—and possibly dangerous—little secret is to go through life with ever-present feelings of isolation, alienation, and disharmony. Even if you limit your poly expression to the realm of fantasy and desire, you may experience a troubling sensation of not quite fitting in or being different from others in some mysterious, unknown way. The closeted person often feels as though he or she is from another planet. Depression, low self-esteem, and a lack of spontaneity are frequently problems.

Todd is a single man in his mid-fifties. He’s been living with his partner Jane for two years, and they consider themselves married but decided against tying the knot legally because they’ve agreed to have an open relationship. Todd was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home where any sex outside of marriage, let alone multipartner sex, was a sure path to Hell. “I spent the first forty-five years of my life fighting my sexual urges. I married at twenty-one, mostly so I could have a sexual partner, but as it turned out, my wife hated sex and refused to even talk about it.

Eventually, I fell in love with another woman and got a divorce so I could marry her. Our sex life was great until she got pregnant and completely lost interest in sex. I still loved her and didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to cheat, so I mostly fantasized about sex with other women and felt awful about myself. I was sure there was something wrong me and didn’t dare discuss my desires with my wife—or anyone else for that matter. I was miserable. Finally, I got desperate enough that I went for an X-rated massage, which helped some, but I felt really guilty about it and was afraid my wife would find out. Then I saw an ad for a “dakini” that said she would teach me how to make sex spiritual. Well she did, and she also told me about polyamory. I fell in love with her, but I still loved my wife, and I just didn’t know what to do. By this time, our son was two years
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old, and I knew I couldn’t abandon him, but I didn’t want to give up my dakini either. I was a mess.”

It’s hard to find compatible, like-minded partners without being up front about who you are and what you want. And with so many polys in the closet, it can be hard to locate compatible partners even if you are willing to let others know that you’re not monogamous. As with any suspect subculture, the people most likely to come out initially include those who are already so far out of the mainstream that they have little to lose by revealing themselves. This further distorts the already bizarre picture the public has of polys as well as flooding an already small “gene pool” with potential partners who are unsuitable for the average poly. Then there are people who are still in the early stages of coming out to themselves and who may get frightened and retreat to monogamy when faced with the prospect of an actual poly relationship because they’ve never seen a successful one.

Consequently, some people give up and make a monogamous commitment out of frustration rather than conviction.

The dearth of out-of-the-closet role models for creating a stable, legitimate poly lovestyle, combined with the perception of limited numbers of potential partners, can create an atmosphere of pessimism, stuckness, and scarcity. Very frequently, the first questions I’m asked by clients who come to me for relationship coaching are, “Do you know anyone this is working for?” Or, “Do you know any long-term open couples?” Even with more people coming out, many still doubt that a healthy poly lovestyle is really a possibility and have difficulty finding the support they need to overcome the challenges inherent in any intimate relationship. Psychologist Geri Weitzman discusses the difficulties polyamorous people have in finding a therapist who will not pathologize them simply because they are poly and cites a 2002 study that found that 38 percent of polyamorous people who were in therapy chose not to even mention their poly lifestyle to their therapist. Of those who did reveal it, 10 percent reported experiencing a negative response. Even when a therapist was not judgmental, some clients ending up using their paid session time to educate therapists who knew nothing about polyamory.4 Others will seek out a second professional to supplement their regular therapist, who they perceive as unable to help them manage an issue having to do with polyamory.

Beth was in a quandary about her marriage to a man who refused to have sex with her. She consulted me to discuss the possibility of taking on an outside lover. “Mitch won’t even talk about sex with me; he just flat
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out refuses to have anything to do with it, but he did say that it would be fine with him if I developed a sexual relationship with someone else. I was raised to believe that marriage meant being faithful to my husband, and the whole idea just seemed wrong to me, but then I met someone who’s in an open relationship who I’m very attracted to. It seems like it might work. My therapist thinks I should leave Mitch, but we’re so compatible in every other way, I don’t want to divorce him, and he says he wants to stay married to me too.”

When I asked what her therapist thought about her having sex with her new friend, Beth admitted that she didn’t want to tell her therapist about this because she was too embarrassed and thought the therapist would dis-approve. I urged her to bring all this to her regular therapist and told her I would continue working with her only if she first arranged for me to have a conversation with her therapist or if she terminated her other therapy and worked with me instead. Beth was surprised that I saw her effort to create a “secret therapy affair” instead of coming out to her therapist as an extension of the cultural pattern of infidelity. She was just doing what seemed normal to her, but that’s what was creating her dilemma in the first place.

Some people do succeed in establishing satisfying nonmonogamous or extramarital relationships. While they are comfortably “out” to themselves and their partners, they still feel that they must hide their lovestyle from neighbors, employers, friends, and extended family. They may disguise a primary partner as a “roommate” or “housekeeper.” They may camouflage a secondary partner as a “business associate” or “friend of the family.” They may avoid restaurants and theaters where someone might recognize them. They may caution their children against discussing the extra partner with friends or teachers. They may simply keep quiet about their unconventional secret. These people may be less troubled than their solitary closet dwellers because they have each other for company.