After several years of making fun of them, I am a little sheepish about the fact that I am starting to come around to what the polyamory people have always espoused, though, I think, for different reasons.
Our society is losing connection between people, and has been for a long time. I don’t mean this new ‘interconnectivity’ bullshit given to us by texting and i.m. I mean a legitimate emotional connection between individuals. I think an increase in sex and non-possessive relationships would help that, but we would have to change our motivations and the way we view sex.
Too often in our society sex is something we have in the presence of a partner, not really with a partner. This is because we often hook up because we want the sex, not the person. I’m not a prude preaching abstinence, I’m merely saying that sex should be a channel through which two (or more) people learn and love* each other, even if that connection will only last the day.
* Not Love, the Romantic term. I mean a deep appreciation for and cherishing of a person. In this context, love does not include any duty, responsibility, or expectation beyond simple honesty.
Note: Prostitution is still fine. If you just need to get off, then by all means, hire a hooker. Don’t pick up a drunken sorority girl. The hooker will be better anyway, and probably smarter.
Let me be clear: sex does not equal love; I know this. But it can be a way for people to learn and appreciate each other, if everyone goes honestly. Sex and emotional investment with multiple people (particularly if concurrent) creates a network that I think many or most americans (at least) are lacking. If we could give up jealousy and possessiveness, such a network should not have to interfere with or prevent long standing, committed relationships such as marriages.
Rarely in this society does the term ‘friends’ include a sexual relationship, and I think that his is a failing of our social understanding. Speaking as someone who’s done it, sex can be a very functional addition to a friendship. the reason it doesn’t work ore often is that people can’t figure out how to treasure that connection without turning into something bigger in their heads, or thinking that it must exist to the exclusion of a more serious romantic relationship. It can and should be an easy, casual, enjoyable, reaffirming act, but it seems to be too complicated (or perhaps too simple) for Americans to figure out.
We already know that most Americans are not sexually satisfied by a single partner. The astronomical rate of extramarital relations shows this, but the problem is that our society had decreed that a relationship must be monogamous. Having studied monogamy among mammals, I can say that it barely exists in the animal kingdom. Why fight it? Wouldn’t if be nice to enjoy sex with multiple partners without having to lie about it, or risk losing a marriage? Eliminate jealousy, remove the concept of possession from sex, and we would be free to connect ourselves much more thoroughly within our social networks.
November 30, 2007 at 8:03 am
this… is something else…
November 30, 2007 at 8:08 am
I enjoyed your essay very much. However, as a person who’s been polyamorous since I was twelve years old, I’m left wondering what your “different reasons” are. The ideas you’re espousing are pretty commonplace within the poly community as I know and love it. What difference might it make in our culture if every person you met was thought of a a potential legitimate lover? Or erotic friend? Or play partner?
Blessings,
‘Storm
November 30, 2007 at 10:59 am
Jones, not that I don’t think you have a point (sort of), but I always run into the same hangup when this subject comes up.
“Eliminate jealousy” is an easy statement to make and a nearly impossible thing to do. Feeling possessive about the people we love isn’t something we just decide to do one morning. It’s biologically ingrained.
November 30, 2007 at 11:37 am
Eliminating jealousy is more possible than you think, but it does require work. I know that for me, when a partner of mine sleeps with someone else there is always an initial stab of jealousy and a sucker punch to my ego. That lasts about a day and a half, over which time I remind myself why her action was reasonable, why I had condoned it in the first place, and how it has not affected our relationship. With those things in mind, jealousy no longer makes any sense.
But it does require some work, especially the first couple times.
November 30, 2007 at 11:44 am
Storm, the main difference I see between myself and the poly people I’ve met is in the way we look at the world. The poly people I know tend to hold an idealistic view that Every person is a potential legitimate lover, because every person is lovable. I don’t hold that view, simply because I don’t really like people. To me, very few people are potential lovers, in terms of percentage, but that number is certainly greater than one. Functionally, my ideas are no different than those of your poly community, but they do very ideologically. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
December 31, 2008 at 6:18 am
Hello, I would like to say that I DON’T agree with any of your ideas. You totally sideswept the reality of STDs and if everyone was promiscuous like you think they should be than the world would be a blood bath of veneral diseases and HIV, resulting in the steady extinction of the human race.
Also, we are only animals in the biological sense of the term. Are brains are more sophisticated than that of other species, therefore we are to act in a more sophisticated manner.
Lastly, I would recommend that you get some counseling for your thwarted ideas about relationships (or the lack of). Many people who have these ideas about sex have been sexually molested or raped in their past and it makes them cold and disconnected to it, so please consider this.
Lastly, you need to do your research because what you are talking about was already tried out in the hippie area of the 60’s and 70’s. It was called “free love.” People in this era also did a lot of drugs and lived reckless lives. It didn’t work then so there’s no reason to believe it’d work now.
January 1, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I have to say that I really love this preceding comment. And there’s a good point there – we are only animals in the biological sense of the term, not in any other sense at all. (Perhaps, we are at times, in a figurative sense animals as well, but this is probably just quibbling.)
July 7, 2009 at 12:47 pm
As someone who just got out of a poly relationship, I can only respond that polyamory, like socialism, cold fusion, and the Detroit Lions’ offensive system, only works on paper. In actual practice, it was a horrendous failure. My partner, who swore that she would never exercise a veto over my other partners, actually exercised two of them, because these relationships did not match her vision of poly. Both of these women, my partner thought, were obsessive and crazy.
In one case, I accepted her veto and broke a wonderful woman’s heart in the process. The second time around, the primary relationship was falling apart, and I didn’t care about the veto. I pressed forward anyway and had a passionate (if unwise) affair.
The primary relationship ended- badly. I came to see the my primary was the crazy one. I further came to see that every seriously poly person I ever met was completely batshit.
Every. Single. One.
These include a large number of highly public, well known poly people.
I have made amends to the woman whose heart I broke. I know that ship sailed, and she has moved on. But her experience with me only confirmed for her that it is simply unworkable. At some level, people want to be pair bonded to one other person.