Polyamory was never on my radar. Growing up on the East Coast, I hadn’t even heard the word. I had questioned the idea of forever monogamy but had rarely heard this idea expressed publicly.
But when I moved to San Francisco, I found that many people in my new community identified as polyamorous or had done so at some point. I ignorantly assumed that “poly” was synonymous with “open relationship,” but with more transparency about sex.
So after living in San Francisco for a while, I figured it was time to find out what polyamory really means from people who could actually tell me. And once I learned more about it, I found that the poly people I met were doing relationships better than my monogamous friends.
(Let me make the sweeping caveat here that I do not know, nor can ever know, everyone’s relationship experiences. The poly folks to whom I spoke stressed that everyone’s experiences are very different and that there is no “right” way to be polyamorous.)
As my friend Faith explained, “Polyamory is about forming relationships with two or more people, but polyamory can look like many things. Relationships take on many different forms, and it is up to the people in them to define what that entails.”
What Is Polyamory?
If the goal of monogamy is to find someone who fulfills all your needs, polyamory, in principal, is about the idea that one relationship can’t necessarily fulfill all your needs. Consensual non-monogamy between two or more people involves everyone being aware about each other’s existence; hence, open communication is necessary. In poly relationships, everyone has agreed to allow each other to date, have sex and create meaningful relationships with others. (This definition comes via a super-helpful website and podcast, Multiamory.)
One of the most relatable descriptions I got was from Jade, who is new to polyamory. She told me that just as her different friendships fulfill different needs, she can’t expect to get everything she needs from one person. Jade explained that her best friend Jessica is great for helping her calm down after rants and talking through things. Jessica is her primary best friend (related to the idea of having a primary partner in a poly relationship). Meanwhile, Jade’s other best friend, Renee, is fun to do girly things with, but not good for emotional support. Renee is there for Jade in different ways than Jessica is, but she loves them both equally and can’t imagine her life without either of them.
“They both fulfill different needs in my life,” Jade explains. “A lot of people want partners like that. Each of these relationships is treated as a serious thing, and not just as a fling. If a poly person breaks up with one of their partners, it’s not just like, ‘Eh, oh well. I’ve got others.’ It’s an actual breakup with feelings involved.”
Halle, a polyamorous friend of a friend, explained to me that one often has a primary partner (whom they may live with, split bills with, raise children with, etc.) and then secondary partners. Some people are able to juggle multiple primary partners, while some people have only secondary partners.
Is Polyamory a New Trend or the New Normal?
To me, polyamory seemed to be a new thing (in the West, at least) that was gaining traction. But my friend Brooke told me that that wasn’t exactly true. “It has existed, but people called it ‘swinging’ or ‘cheating.’ Some women allowed their husbands to have mistresses, but it wasn’t talked about.”
The social norm has been to get married young, stay married forever, have kids and not allow oneself to think about anyone else for the rest of one’s life. (Pause for some radical ’60s and ’70s free love and the sexual revolution.) But polyamorists don’t think that that’s realistic.
My friend Michael put it in more Berkeley terms: “Nonmonogamy/polyamory is probably growing in popularity because people are realizing the patriarchy is absurd and that true love is about authentic connection, not ownership.”
It’s important to distinguish between “open relationships” and polyamory. In an open relationship, a monogamous person is often seeing multiple people because they haven’t yet decided that they like someone enough to commit only to them. And often these side relationships are more sexual than emotional. But in polyamory, one is able to maintain multiple romantic, emotional and sexual relationships at the same time with the people they like and are committed to.That’s important to understand. These relationships aren’t flings; they are real, serious and ongoing emotional commitments with multiple partners, and those commitments are equally important, without hierarchy.
What Polyamorists Are Doing Better Than My Monogamous Friends (And What My Monogamist Friends Could Learn from Them)
When talking to all of these people about their relationships, something clicked for me. The way these people were describing their relationships — open and communicative — was far from the “complex” and “hard to juggle” life I had imagined. Sure, managing more people makes everything a little harder, but the “guidelines” of poly-ness that stipulated open and clear communication seemed far superior to the communication problems inherent in monogamous relationships I had been in and witnessed.
Steve, who is married and practices polyamory with his wife, said that in traditional monogamous relationships, there are certain understood assumptions about what the rules are. When you start to eliminate some expected social boundaries, you have to figure out what those rules are going to be. In monogamous relationships, it can be unnerving to have those conversations. (Haven’t we all had the awkward “What are we?” conversation?) But in polyamorous relationships, those conversations are required to make sure everyone is on the same page and that conversation actually benefits from talking it out. There is no room for the unsaid assumptions often made in monogamous relationships.
Brooke said to me, “If my partner needs something, it’s his responsibility to obtain that. If he needs something and doesn’t tell me, it’s not my job to know. How is someone supposed to know what you need if you don’t tell them? And how is one person supposed to fulfill all of your needs?”
I am a woman who has played the “I am not going to tell you what I want, and you are going to figure it out or I will be mad” game. And so have a lot of my friends, of all genders and sexualities. But there’s no room for that in polyamory. And no need. Because if one person can’t provide something, a partner is free to look elsewhere for it, and not just wait for it to happen. “I can’t be everything he possibly needs. [In a monogamous relationship] either he is sacrificing something to be with me, or he is going to choose to not be with me. And those are not the only options,” Brooke said.
Time Management
I jokingly asked my poly friends if they used Google Calendar to schedule dates, and some of them actually said yes. Not everyone plans their hangouts in this way, but all have some kind of designated time together. Jade told me that she and her partner designated two days a week as date nights.
A lot of my monogamous friends who are dating have grown frustrated by their partner’s radio silence and the anxiety of being unsure if/when they will see them next. The routine and structure of calendaring seems like a good way to alleviate that frustration, with the added benefit of transparency. Plus, it creates an obligation not to overschedule. Everyone I date in the future is getting synced into my iCal. (Half kidding.)
Not Suppressing Feelings
My friend Michael explained, “The ‘traditional’ marriage contract says, ‘I’ll love you forever and never love another,’ but that’s a promise most can’t keep, and probably why half of contemporary marriages end in divorce.” Michael says he has a desire to have many deep emotional connections rooted in friendship.
I haven’t cheated on my ex-boyfriends, but I confess to feeling desires at times and confusion about those desires. But because I was in a monogamous relationship, I quashed those feelings and wrote them off as “wrong.” But according to polyamory, those aren’t wrong — they are natural. But because of my own fears that we might break up and the unspoken agreement we had, I felt I couldn’t express those feelings.
Focusing on Strengths and Not Looking for “Better”
Here’s a well-known move from a serial monogamist’s playbook: you leave someone for the chance someone else might be better.
In polyamory, there is no “better,” only “different.” So you don’t have to leave a good thing if it’s missing something — you just add another to fulfill that lack. If one partner is wonderful and intellectual but not particularly social, that doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. Instead, your other partner can be the one who joins you for the dance floor and big parties.
This makes dealing with breakups difficult, however. As Brooke explained, “With poly, you don’t break up because you met someone better; you break up because you no longer want that person in your life. There’s no excuse. There’s no reason outside of yourself — no ‘I fell in love with someone else.’ It’s ‘I don’t like you anymore,’ and that’s really difficult.”
Letting People Be Themselves Instead of Molding Them
Michael told me that the most important thing polyamory helped him with was learning to release his expectations. Before, his long-term monogamous relationships created problems when he expected his sole partner to meet all his needs. Now his partners are all different and fulfill him in different ways; he doesn’t expect they will show up in any way besides who they truly are.
Dealing with Jealousy and Making a Partner Feel Secure
With open communication and without cloudy assumptions, each partner in a polyamorous relationship knows what’s going on and feels secure. This involves regularly checking in with a partner.
One of my biggest fears about being polyamorous was the thought that I’d be too jealous. But Brooke called me out on this and dug deeper. We are taught that jealousy equates to protecting what is ours, she said. But there is no such thing as being “too jealous.” Jealousy is usually some other fear, masked; in my case, my fear was that if my partner and I were polyamorous, I won’t get to see them as much.
Deconstructing a vague word like “jealousy” helps identify your needs — in my case, availability. This helps manage and express one’s relationship fears, which, in turn, helps everyone in the relationship feel more secure.
Digging Deep to Know Yourself as Part of a Partnership
In this same vein, Brooke explained, saying to a partner, “I don’t like your other partner,” is similarly vague. Instead, understand what you don’t like about them. Does the other person take up too much time that you previously spent with your partner? Do they not respect you? In order to say, “This is what I object to, and this is how we work around it,” you can’t be vague.
This “knowing of yourself” is hard. And in a polyamorous relationship, you get to learn about yourself from multiple people. Brooke believes that as long as partners talk about everything, they get a better handle on knowing themselves.
