When I chose my life of polyamory, I was desperately worried that my friends would think I was some sort of sex-obsessed selfish pervert, and judging by some of their initial reactions, my fears weren’t entirely unjustified. So I made sure I distanced myself from all those nasty notions of ‘bad’ sluttery we’re all so familiar with; I was the very model of the ‘Ethical Slut.’
What do I mean by that? What is polyamory? Well, it’s a complex, difficult thing to define, but at its most basic it’s a commitment to romantic or sexual relationships that aren’t exclusive. In other words, you may have a relationship with your partner, and he or she may have another partner or more than one, and so might you. You might belong to a triple, instead of the more conventional couple we’re all used to, or even a quad. You might all share a house, or may live in separate homes, dividing your time between partners. Sounds wack, right? But polyamorists will tell you it’s only natural, that the lifelong exclusive romantic relationship we’ve all come to expect in the Western world is a cultural invention, and we can actually choose what works best for us each individually.
There’s a whole new language of relationships being worked out to deal with the complexities of polyamory… it gets pretty complicated. There’s your Primary Partner(s), the person or persons with whom you are in your most significant relationship, then there’s your Secondary and even Tertiary partners with whom you have slightly less involved relationships. To clarify – polyamory isn’t just a being in a couple that fools around a bit on the side, like ‘swinging,’ because you can actually have more than one Primary Partner (i.e.: everyone’s on the same footing), such as in a Triangle relationship. And it gets more complicated than that… your relationship can be closed (i.e.: nobody new can be brought in – that’s called Polyfidelity) or open to anyone (what some polyamorists jokingly call Polyfuckery).
The important point here, the REALLY important bit, is that it’s all honest and consensual – everyone involved knows what’s going on, and is free to participate or not. In other words, it’s NOT ‘cheating,’ because no agreements are being broken. In fact, polyamory is all about honest communication, negotiation and respect for the people you’re involved with. It’s NOT a traditional polygamous harem, where one man has several women at his beck and call (the stereotypical straight-boy dream), in fact, if you go onto any polyamory website you’ll find women are pursuing non-monogamous relationships just as much as men are, and that they’re happy calling the shots*.
Polyamorists say they’re just being realistic, that the Number One relationship hang-up in the Western world is ‘cheating’ and being ‘cheated on,’ that dishonesty around non-monogamy is widespread and wrecks a lot of otherwise good relationships, and that they’re just accepting human nature for what it is and moving past all the guilt and hurt by dealing with the issues in ways that are respectful and honest. They don’t think polyamory is right for everyone, they stress that it’s NOT a fix for a bad relationship (in fact it’ll just make a bad relationship worse), and they point out that it takes work – LOTS of work, and good communication skills. In fact, think of all the work that goes into a monogamous relationship, and multiply that by the number of partners in the poly relationship, and that should be enough to put you off, right? But even so, polyamorists will tell you it’s worth it, that “love shared is love multiplied.”
What do I mean by that? What is polyamory? Well, it’s a complex, difficult thing to define, but at its most basic it’s a commitment to romantic or sexual relationships that aren’t exclusive. In other words, you may have a relationship with your partner, and he or she may have another partner or more than one, and so might you. You might belong to a triple, instead of the more conventional couple we’re all used to, or even a quad. You might all share a house, or may live in separate homes, dividing your time between partners. Sounds wack, right? But polyamorists will tell you it’s only natural, that the lifelong exclusive romantic relationship we’ve all come to expect in the Western world is a cultural invention, and we can actually choose what works best for us each individually.
There’s a whole new language of relationships being worked out to deal with the complexities of polyamory… it gets pretty complicated. There’s your Primary Partner(s), the person or persons with whom you are in your most significant relationship, then there’s your Secondary and even Tertiary partners with whom you have slightly less involved relationships. To clarify – polyamory isn’t just a being in a couple that fools around a bit on the side, like ‘swinging,’ because you can actually have more than one Primary Partner (i.e.: everyone’s on the same footing), such as in a Triangle relationship. And it gets more complicated than that… your relationship can be closed (i.e.: nobody new can be brought in – that’s called Polyfidelity) or open to anyone (what some polyamorists jokingly call Polyfuckery).
The important point here, the REALLY important bit, is that it’s all honest and consensual – everyone involved knows what’s going on, and is free to participate or not. In other words, it’s NOT ‘cheating,’ because no agreements are being broken. In fact, polyamory is all about honest communication, negotiation and respect for the people you’re involved with. It’s NOT a traditional polygamous harem, where one man has several women at his beck and call (the stereotypical straight-boy dream), in fact, if you go onto any polyamory website you’ll find women are pursuing non-monogamous relationships just as much as men are, and that they’re happy calling the shots*.
Polyamorists say they’re just being realistic, that the Number One relationship hang-up in the Western world is ‘cheating’ and being ‘cheated on,’ that dishonesty around non-monogamy is widespread and wrecks a lot of otherwise good relationships, and that they’re just accepting human nature for what it is and moving past all the guilt and hurt by dealing with the issues in ways that are respectful and honest. They don’t think polyamory is right for everyone, they stress that it’s NOT a fix for a bad relationship (in fact it’ll just make a bad relationship worse), and they point out that it takes work – LOTS of work, and good communication skills. In fact, think of all the work that goes into a monogamous relationship, and multiply that by the number of partners in the poly relationship, and that should be enough to put you off, right? But even so, polyamorists will tell you it’s worth it, that “love shared is love multiplied.”
The polyamorist is careful to mention that it’s about love, not sex, and very often they reject labels like heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual when talking about themselves because those terms lead people to focus on the nookie – who gets it, with whom, and how often. Poly people frequently point out that they often have fewer sexual partners than people who practise serial monogamy, and that sometimes their relationships don’t even involve sex at all. A lot of polyamorists say that friendship IS a kind of polyamory… we don’t expect our friends not to have other friends, we accept that they might not want exactly the same things as we do, we let them live and grow and learn from others. It takes a lot of trust, great communication skills, and a willingness to tackle the hard stuff head on (like jealousy and insecurity).
The long and the short of it is that people who practice polyamory make a distinction between what they do and what people generally think of when they think about non-monogamy, which is dishonesty, deception, and rampant, indiscriminate promiscuity. Look at us, poly people say, we’re respectable!!
In other words, they don’t want to look like the ‘bad’ slut.
Who is this ‘bad’ slut? We’re all familiar with her/him. S/he is villainized in television, movies and popular song, because s/he has casual sexual relationships that don’t involve love, whether through ‘cheating,’ swinging, or just good ol’ fashioned promiscuous singlehood. The ‘bad’ slut ISN’T someone who cheats on a partner because s/he’s met someone s/he likes better and then leaves the first partner for the second, that’s pretty commonplace these days and, while hurtful, is generally accepted as just doing serial monogamy badly. No, the ‘bad’ slut is usually female (when it’s a guy his whoring around is usually celebrated – double standards people!!), s/he’s someone who enjoys sex for the sake of it and is happy to have it outside of relationships. And in our contemporary culture, that’s just not on.
Sociologists tell us that this state of affairs was set up by heterosexual couples hundreds of years ago, when romantic love stopped being just an adulterous liaison in the royal courts of Europe and started being seen (in the West at least) as a good basis for marriage. It’s not too much of a jump from sex as an expression of love within marriage to sex as an expression of love before marriage, as long as the two people do actually intend to get married. And from that it’s no big step to sex as an expression of love without marriage ever actually entering the equation, and to loving sexual relations between people of the same sex who aren’t allowed to get married. But it’s a much bigger jump from this kind of sex as part of a loving, intimate relationship to sex just for the fun of it, outside of a relationship, with whoever we want to have it with. That’s why promiscuity is still frowned on, why gay and lesbian couples can be together and be respectable and accepted, as long as they keep the sex in relationships.
As a culture, we don’t like people having casual sex, we tend to think it’s something you grow out of, or happily give up when you meet “the One.” Even recent shows like Sex and the City, for all their boasting of being about empowered women enjoying their sexuality, ultimately preach the old lesson that the most satisfying and fulfilled sex life is one that leads (even in the most roundabout way) to the traditional “Happily Ever After.” Maybe that’s what’s behind the recent rise in the popularity of polyamory: it’s non-monogamy, but it’s still playing by the rules. Kinda.
But there’s a problem with polyamorists calling themselves the “Ethical Sluts.” It implies that polyamory is the only ethical non-monogamy, it implies that people who are happy to enjoy sex outside of committed relationships are incapable of being honest with or respectful of their sexual partners. Essentially it reinforces all those old notions about the ‘bad’ slut, condemning all those whose non-monogamy takes other forms, such as the open marriage, friends-with-benefits or fuck-buddies, or sexually active but confirmed singledom.
Personally, I’m happiest in committed emotional relationships with at most two or three people, whether or not it involves sex. But I have plenty of friends who similarly aren’t the monogamous type, who don’t identify as polyamorous, and who are quite capable of being responsible and considerate of their sexual partners’ feelings and bodies. And then I have those weird and wonderful friends who are somewhere-in-between, being in honest, committed triples, quads etc, and still “playing the field.” Good on them, I say, if that’s what makes them happiest.
And yes, I have plenty of friends in exclusive, monogamous partnerships who are perfectly happy that way, and I’m perfectly happy for them too. I cry at their weddings and civil unions, I celebrate their engagement parties and anniversaries. There really is so much diversity out there, and it’s all beautiful. I wish everybody could see that.
* For more info about polyamory, see (among others):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0SX6SILmDs
http://www.polyamoryonline.org/
http://www.polyamory.org/
DannyR
I chose to submit this piece separate from Deviant because Firstly I wanted to do the topic justice, and could only do that with a higher word-count, and secondly because I wanted a distinction made between my personal views and those of Deviant and UniQ. Will ran it, and made a nice colour centrespread of it, he was actually pretty chuffed to have something so left-field, and the poly people I knew were pretty pleased with it too. One of my favourite pieces I've written.
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