A Couples' Guide To Polyamory
What is polyamory? Who does it? Can it work for you? Dr. Joy talks about the poly community and issues that can arise. For more information on love and health, or to read a full transcript of this video, visit http://www.loveandhealth.info
Step 1:
Usually secondary partners also have a primary partner, or maybe they’re seeking Mr. or Ms. Number One. So, secondary relationships do change over time. A primary couple will tend to have serial secondary relationships. But sometimes a secondary can continue on with a partner for many years, sometimes even many decades. And sometimes a couple will desire a third person who is part of their relationship on an equal basis. Or an individual might bond to two other people, and negotiate a three-way relationship. You might see a woman and two men, or a man and two women, or three people of the same sex. But in any case, it’s called a group marriage, or a triad. And group marriages can actually involve as many people as desired. They would share income, they would child-rearing, and would essentially be part of an extended family. Sometimes people are exclusive sexually within the group or the triad, and sometimes they have other relationships outside the group.
Step 2:
Some people see themselves as poly by choice. And others see themselves as poly by nature. In either case, most poly people believe that love is bigger than two people, and that one partner can’t satisfy all their needs, so different partners are chosen to satisfy different spectrums of emotional and/or sexual needs.
Step 3:
Now, detractors would say that looking to have all of one’s needs satisfied, and even thinking that you’re supposed to have your needs fully satisfied, is a childish or a narcissistic way of approaching life. And of course, poly people would argue that that’s simply not so. Some people who define themselves as poly don’t always live an active poly life. They may choose during some periods to focus only on one relationship. Yet, they want to keep the door open, should another relationship come along at the right time or under the right circumstances, so that they can embrace it as well.
Step 4:
Some couples create a kind of hybrid between polyamory and swinging. These friendships involve more than recreational sex, but they are strictly negotiated so that they don’t threaten the primary relationship. These are usually called swing/poly, or social polyamory. Orchestrating a poly life demands a lot of you. It requires that you take a very hard look at your need for grounding and your tolerance for change. To presume that poly is solely about sexual satisfaction is to miss the point. And it’s a point that brings couples to serious negotiation. Because living a poly life is not an easy trick. It means that your arrangement has to be complex, and requires skilled communication, an enormous amount of self-awareness, and a lot of negotiation. Successful poly threesomes and moresomes really have to up the ante on their ability to be communicative and aware partners.
Step 5:
The foundation of poly is consent, which must be given at an explicit and detailed level. Couples can spend many months negotiating their polyamorous agreements, and then continue to refine them and update them over time. If any aspect of a relationship is not working for anybody, then it’s just not working. And it has to be renegotiated. Poly falls apart when people make arrangements under pressure, or when they lie to themselves about what they think they can handle.
Step 6:
At first, poly might sound like an answer to all the answers of monogamous relationships. It has depth and variety, it has novelty and security. But issues often taken for granted in monogamy need tons of processing in poly, and that means, like I said, loads of work. Couples have to look at the big picture stuff and the day-to-day stuff. The big picture stuff might mean negotiating whether or not one partner has to meet the other person’s potential partners before they have sex with them. And the day-to-day stuff might include, is it OK to have sex with someone else in the master bedroom bed? Or, how much money is it OK to spend on someone else?
Step 7:
Then there’s the question of what happens when your partner has a date, and your date book is completely blank. That can be kind of hard. You know that your partner is out there making love to someone else, and you’re home all alone.
Step 8:
So, polyamory can bring up an enormous amount of emotional discomfort, and yet it’s seen as an opportunity to work that through. Polyamory embraces the ideal that we can feel emotions other than jealousy when a partner has another lover in his or her life. A term you’ll hear in poly circles is “compersion”. [sp] That’s a word coined to denote your feeling of delight when you know that your partner is blessed by more love than just your own. But we don’t grow up steeped in developing compersion [sp]. That’s a pretty foreign concept to most of us. Consequently, polyamorous people get jealous just like anybody else. However, they find that a much less alarming experience than most other people. Because dealing with your feelings of jealousy constructively is one of the lessons they feel they will gain from being poly.
Step 9:
Poly people note that when a partner begins to date someone new, the heady glow and hormonal highs of what’s called new relationship energy can overtake their partner. It’s during those periods that it can be really hard to see your partner going off with somebody other than you. But since poly people are generally well-acquainted with other poly people, the support and guidance of the poly community can be very helpful here. This is when friends can share strategies for contending with what is a most predictable aspect of poly life.
Step 10:
Legal issues for poly people can be very complicated. And our legal system often penalizes people for being different. Divorce and child custody issues are particularly dicey. An organization called the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. that seeks to help people negotiate these very choppy waters. NCSF can be found at NCSFreedom.org. These days are becoming more aware of diverse relationship styles and are unquestionably less judgmental than they were perceived as being in the past. After all, problems arise in poly relationships just like in exclusive relationships. Obstacles need to be handled, and therapists are there to help without invoking judgment and without invoking shame. So if you’re thinking about exploring polyamory and you aren’t quite sure how to go about getting started, and doing it the right way, it’s good to know that therapists are also available to help, are non-judgmental, and many of them do know a lot about helping you navigate the waters of polyamory. And there’s a whole poly community out there, too, who is happy to help anyone learn more about what poly is all about, and how to make it work for you. Thank you for joining me today. I invite you to watch other Joy Spot videos, and have a look at some of the other articles here on love and health, or visit my website at JoyDavidson.com. See you next time.
