Much Love

Polyamory is getting more popular:

Increasingly, polyamorous people—not to be confused with the prairie-dress-clad fundamentalist polygamists—are all around us. By some estimates, there are now roughly a half-million polyamorous relationships in the U.S., though underreporting is common. Some sex researchers put the number even higher, at 4 to 5 percent of all adults, or 10 to 12 million people. More often than not, they’re just office workers who find standard picket-fence partnerships dull. Or, like Sarah, they’re bisexuals trying to fulfill both halves of their sexual identities. Or they’re long-term couples who don’t happen to think sexual exclusivity is the key to intimacy.

Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist who interviewed 40 polyamorous people over the course of several years for her recent book, The Polyamorists Next Door, says that polyamorous configurations with more than three people tend to be rarer and have more turnover. “Polys” are more likely to be liberal and educated, she said, and in the rare cases that they do practice religion, it’s usually paganism or Unitarian Universalism.

Polys differentiate themselves from swingers because they are emotionally, not just sexually, involved with the other partners they date. And polyamorous arrangements are not quite the same as “open relationships” because in polyamory, the third or fourth or fifth partner is just as integral to the relationship as the first two are.

Miri Mogilevsky praises Olga Khazan’s piece as “well-researched, balanced, and accurate overall,” but takes the opportunity to debunk some myths about the practice. Among them? “Bisexual people try polyamory because it’s not fulfilling to only date a person of one gender”:

Some do, yes. But this also ties into an unfortunate, harmful, and inaccurate myth about bisexual people: that they will inevitably cheat on you because they “need” to be with someone of another gender. Myths like these, in turn, contribute to prejudice and discrimination against bisexual people, who may face such hurtful attitudes both from the straight majority and from gays and lesbians.

For many bisexual people, the gender of their partner isn’t nearly as essential a factor as others seem to think it is. We may notice it, sure, but we don’t sit around thinking, “I’m very glad that I’m dating both Suzie and Tom because Suzie is a girl and Tom is a boy!” It’s just like you can be attracted to blondes, brunettes,andredheads, without necessarily feeling stifled and unfulfilled if you’re only dating brunettes at a given point in time.

The Dish thread “But What If Three People Love Each Other?” is here.