Poly Myths

There are all kinds of myths about Polyamory. Here are some of the questions and concepts I am faced with when people are trying to grasp Polyamory but come at it from a position of stereotypical monogamous mindsets:

Alright! Group Sex! -
Well, yes, having open and honest relationships with multiple people allows you the opportunity for group sex. I mean, if you're in a monogamous relationship or you're cheating on your partner, or you have Don't Ask Don't Tell policies, you're not very likely to be able to talk your partners into hot orgies. However, Polyamorous relationships are not about the sex. They're about the relationships. So in order to have group sex, you still have to have a relationship that includes multiple partners who actually want to have sex with each other. And that's not very common, even within the Poly community. Not all Poly people are bisexual (which is required if you have partners of the opposite sex and you want them to have sex with each other), and not all Poly relationships are group-partnered. Vees and Ns and Lines are far more common than Triads, Quads, and other multi-partner groups. All your partners should know about each other, and many of them might even be good friends with each other, but that doesn't mean that they all want to hop into bed with each other. Many Poly people who have had multi-person relationships have never had group sex ... some aren't interested and some just haven't had the right mix of partners.

With so many partners, you must get laid a lot! (a.k.a. the "Playa" myth) -
Well, not really. There might be more sexual variety, but that doesn't necessarily translate into more sex in general, nor does it in any way imply that the sex is casual or there are no commitments or emotional intimacy involved. There are still a limited number of hours in the day, and we all have other obligations like work or school or housework or children, and many of us just aren't interested in sex 24 hours a day every day! Plus, many of us have partners that don't share a home with us and some are even long distance, living outside the city, state, or even the country. Now, it is common for a couple in the early stages of their relationship to have lots of sex at first, and maybe that tapers off as time passes. And since poly people have the ability to start new relationships while enjoying an ongoing relationship, then theoretically it's possible for poly people to engage in the New Relationship Energy practice of shagging like bunnies more often or for longer periods than monogamous people who have long-term monogamous relationships where the initial NRE nympho-sex has worn off and they can't start a new one until the old one ends. But the reality is, in my experience and observation, that with so many emotional relationships going on at once, we tend to spend a lot of time processing about relationships and our emotions, and not nearly as much time shagging as some of us would like. A common poly joke is "More sex? Hell, I spend so much time talking, I hardly ever get laid!"

So you can take the best parts of 2 different guys and make 1 perfect man! -
Squick! This phrase just bothers me. It assumes that people are not whole people, but rather puzzle pieces designed for fitting into pre-determined holes. It completely ignores the fact that people are whole and complete individuals all unto themselves AND that each relationship is its own unique and individual entity with needs of its own. It is true that you might find different qualities with different partners. For instance, maybe one of your partners enjoys dancing and another really likes quiet evenings at home and taking care of the house. But chances are that they probably have quite a few things in common with each other since they all share things in common with you. You might also find that some activity or interest you want to share with a partner is not present in any of your current partners. An interesting phenomenon also happens in that each relationship has different needs and you might find that you desire a particular quality, not in general, but with a specific partner only. For instance, some people think they need massive amounts of "alone time" or "me-time" and personal space. They tend to feel closed in or claustrophobic if they don't have their own bedroom or office space or even their own house entirely. But then, they might get into a relationship where this partner does not threaten or confine their need for "alone time" and they find they can be happy with less space or less time apart than they thought. What happens is that they needed X amount of hours in "me-time" with a particular partner, but they don't have that same need with another partner.

The trick here is to see yourself as a complete and whole individual, worthy of love. Once you see yourself like that, your partners cease to be puzzle pieces that you try to fit into your life to create "a whole" happiness. They instead become what they are ... people who enrich and add to your quality of life, rather than people who are responsible for your happiness. You can then enjoy them for the benefits they bring to you (and you to them) without expecting them to provide your happiness for you ... because we are each responsible for our own happiness and expecting someone else to provide it will undoubtedly lead to failure.

So, polyamory is just cheating then.
No, by definition it is not cheating. Cheating is breaking a promise, vow, or agreement either tacit or explicit. Polyamory is the open, honest and ethical practice of multi-partner relationships. In a polyamorous relationship, you have to have the consent of ALL your partners in order to have any other partners. For most poly people, mere tolerance from the other partner isn't even enough ... we require acceptance from our partners' other partners of our relationship with the shared partner.

Oh, so polyamory is like swinging!
Again, not quite. Polyamory and swinging are two different types of relationships, although many consider them to be two ends of a single continuum. The main difference is the focus of the relationship. A swinging relationship is a dyad, or a romantic couple, who engages in recreational sex outside of their partnership. The details of the outside sexual relationships can vary from purely anonymous sex, outside sex partners that both members of the couple must share, group sex, sex with friends, and sometimes it will include a sexual relationship that has developed an emotional connection. But a polyamorous relationship focuses on the relationship, whether it includes sex or not. There are people who enjoy both poly relationships and swinging, sometimes at the same time. But they are distinct from each other.

So you just have a bunch of friends then?
This implies a fundamental assumption that poly people do not have emotional intimacy with their partners, and are "just friends" (yet another tacit assumption about what "friendship" means). Although it can happen that a polyamorous person has "friends" that he or she also has sex with, and these "friends" can range from casual acquaintences to very emotionally close friends that he or she loves, the key here is "relationships". Just as a monogamous person can, over a lifetime, have relationships of varying degrees of intensity, a polyamorous person also has relationships that can range from "friends" to "spouse". What makes a poly person different from a monogamous person who just has "friends" is that the negative implications that come with the phrase "just friends" do not necessarily apply to the relationships that a poly person has. It is possible for a poly person to have multiple relationships with deep emotional intimacy, a high level of entwinement, financial entanglement, and life-long or long-term intentions and commitments. Imagine every relationship you've ever had, from the casual one- or two-night dates to spouses. Now imagine all of those relationships happening all at the same time, or several overlapping each other over time. That isn't quite the same as the image of all your "friends" over your lifetime occuring at once, whether you had sex with your "friends" or not.

Polyamory is for people who can't commit
Actually, if you can't commit to one person, you definately can't commit to two! Polyamory is about forming committed relationships, just more than one of them simultaneously. Long-term committments are made and kept in polyamorous relationships. There are many different things a person can commit to, sexual fidelity is only one of them. Most monogamous people in our society practice "serial monogamy", which is actually the practice of having multiple relationships, one after the other, over one's lifetime. This seems to me, a more accurate example of someone who can't commit. Poly people do not throw away their lovers when a new person comes along. Many serial monogamists see their lovers as expendable, someone to discard when someone better comes along. They may not think of their current partner as "expendable", if they believe that they are "in love" or have found The One. Certainly their past relationships were "expendable" since they are no longer with them in order to be with their current partner. But once they meet another person who matches with them, and believing that they can't love more than one person at a time, they tend to dump the existing partner for the new partner, thinking that if they fell in love with the new person, then something must be lacking with the old person; since they love the new person, he or she must be "better than" the old one. Polyamorists don't see people in terms of "better than", we see them as unique individuals who all contribute to enriching the quality of life and therefore are not expendable or replaceable. We merely attempt to make room for new people without usurping the existing people first.

All that screwing around sounds dangerous, there must be a problem with STDs.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Sexually Transmitted Infections are a very real concern. However, it has been my experience that, because of the emphasis on openess, honesty, and ethical considerations, many poly people take a very high degree of personal responsibility when it comes to sexual safety. Since poly people are allowed to take on additional partners, it is rarely an issue for "cheating" or secret side sex partners that can bring an STD into an existing dyadic relationship. Individuals take responsibility for their own actions and for their own safety by regular physical checkups, STD testing, and often engage in dialog that includes a full sexual history of everyone involved. Agreements like Condom Contracts and Fluid Bonding are also common in poly relationships, where individuals limit their sexual activity outside of an established group. Compare that to the mindset of our monogamous society that is more comfortable approving cheating than open relationships, and is hesitant to share sexual history or have explicit conversations about sexual safety and understanding about sexual biology, and you have a subculture that is more responsible as a whole than the overall culture from which they came. More on this in the Safer Sex page.

Polyamory is harmful for children
This really falls under a fear of sexuality, rather than any evidence that multi-relationships in general are harmful to children. There are well-adjusted children in monogamous relationships and there are well-adjusted children in polyamorous families, just as there are disturbed children of both. A single mother with a long string of abusive, temporary lovers is certainly more damaging than a family that includes 3 adults in a polyfidelitous, loving home. And what about those children who have two or more step-parents and are shuttled around every weekend, month, summer, or what-have-you in a constant state of instability, always afraid to develop emotional attachments to adults because the parents keep rotating them out as if through a circular door? Don't forget the two-parent families where the "love is lost" and they are only together "for the children", yet the children can feel the tension and anger in the home, particularly if the parents fight openly or use their children as weapons against their partner. There was a time, throughout most of human history, when we understood that it took a tribe to raise a child. Parents only recently became isolated monogamous couples with no outside support in childrearing. Children were usually raised in homes that included grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and sometimes servants and household employees. It took this many fadults to adequately care for children. In our society today, it is nearly impossible to provide for a household without at least two incomes, and with both parents out of the home to earn money, children are raised by daycare or other relatives. In a poly home, you can have two or more incomes and still have a full-time caregiver. You have several adults to provide discipline and love and attention. You have an atmosphere that emphasizes love as a preferred relationship model, many of which include egalitarian structures providing good role models for children about gender issues and advocates personal responsibility and honest, ethical treatment of others.

When it comes right down to it, proponents of this theory will usually get to the root issue, which is a fear that the kids will be exposed to all kinds of kinky sex orgies. Monogamous people are just as likely as poly people to engage in kinky sex. Which is to say there are people in both relationship styles who enjoy bizarre sex games and people who enjoy basic, missionary sex and everything in between. The big difference is that a poly family will tend to develop tools for open communication and be more comfortable discussing difficult topics like sex and health and emotional issues, and would therefore be potentially more capable of healthy conversations and education with their children about these same issues. Just as monogamous people are expected to use discretion when it comes to exposing their children to sexuality, poly people are capable of the same level of discretion. In other words, what happens in the bedroom is just as likely to stay in the bedroom. Don't overlook the fact that not all poly families have children. Some of us are Childfree By Choice and our families include adults but not children.

Love is Limitless
Romantic love is not limitless, although there are philosophical debates about a more abstract form of love, as in love for humanity in general. Humans have a limit in time, energy and resources that can be dedicated to meaningful romantic relationships. Humans also have a mental/emotional limitation to the number of people they can have a meaningful emotional connection with. That number is not static and depends upon many variables, but there is a circle of people that we can let into our monkeysphere ... that is the group of people that we are able to conceptualize as people, as opposed to anonymous humans. The closer someone is to our monkeysphere, the more that person means to us. Eventually, people reach a level where we don't consider them people, which enables us to kill them during war or torture them for having a different religion or use them to manufacture our clothing at below-poverty conditions or pretend not to see them when they beg on the street corner. The point is, we have limits on who we can love and how we love them.

Poly people don't feel jealous.
Poly people are people, and capable of the same range of emotions as anyone else. The difference is that monogamous society accepts jealousy in relationships and only seeks to control the triggers of jealousy, whereas poly people seek to understand the reason why we feel jealous and to work on the underlying issue so that the situation that triggered the jealous reaction no longer triggers those feelings of jealousy because we are now secure in our relationships. Many people in poly relationships do not necessarily feel jealousy in the same circumstances that monogamous people do. Some poly people do claim to have never felt jealousy, but that's more related to being secure in their relationships, rather than being poly by itself. Monogamous people can be secure in their relationships and therefore don't feel jealous, just as poly people can be insecure and therefore do feel jealous. The goal of many poly people is not to control their partners' actions to prevent feeling jealous, but to understand and attack the root issue so that their partners' actions do not trigger jealous feelings in the first place. More about jealousy.

Polyamory oppresses and objectifies women.
This is a confusion of polyamory with a specific type of polygyny. Many people have virtually no exposure to non-monogamous relationship styles other than the worst cases of the Fundamental Mormons on the news who practice religion-based, mysogynistic, male-dominated marriages of one man to many women, often marrying young girls, some of whom are blood-related. In societies that practice polygyny, it is most common that the women are viewed as property or come with property that the males want to control. Polyamory is not this. In fact, it is possible to have polygynous relationships that are not this. Polyamory and the various forms of Polygamy are not the same thing. You can have polyamorous people who are not married and you can have multiply-married people who do not have *love* relationships, although it is possible to have marriage and multiple love relationships co-exist.

Polyamory applies equally to everybody. It's not about collecting women for your harem. Each individual relationship decides its rules and structure to the agreement of everyone in it. Sometimes this means a full egalitarian structure. Occasionally this means the male(s) in the relationship have multiple relationships but not vice versa. And equally likely the female(s) in the relationship can have multiple partners and not vice versa. But more likely, each partner has however many partners they have the time and emotional capacity for, depending upon individual ability and not gender. Whatever works for every single individual involved is acceptable. Polyamory is not about "owning" your partner(s), it's about sharing your life and your love with people.

I must not be adequate if my lover wants someone else - or - If you love someone, you shouldn't want anyone else - or - my partner shouldn't want anyone else if I am "enough".
I'm not really sure where this idea comes from or why it persists. For as common as this myth is, it certainly doesn't hold up in practice! This is based on a "starvation model" of love ... the idea that love is a quantifiable resource and stored in the heart like milk is stored in a pitcher. You can't give your "whole heart" to someone and have anything left to give anyone else. If you give love to another person, that love comes from the pitcher of love reserved for your first lover and therefore love given to someone new is love taken away from someone old.

What a bizarre concept! Biologically speaking, we both have two parents, right? For those who know both their parents and have healthy relationships with them, do you take love from your mother to have enough love for your father? What about kids? When your second kid comes along, do you take love away from the first kid? How do you answer the first kid when he says "why are you having a baby, mommy? Aren't I enough?" The answer is that there is enough love in our hearts for more than one person. It's not about being "enough". When we fall in love with someone, the part of our brain that makes us attracted to other people does not magically shut off. "I may be married, but I'm not dead!" Most monogamous people aren't really monogamous either, they're just sexually intimate with one person at a time ... at least in theory. And with statistics showing that as many as 34% of men between the ages of 50 to 64 admitting to have cheated at least once, evidence suggests that the theory isn't too widely practiced.

People are unique and individual human beings, and our relationships with them are as unique and individual as the people themselves. How many people profess to still love their "first love"? How many people have fulfilling and satisfying marriages only to be widowed and later fall in love with someone new without ever fully being "out of love" for their deceased spouse? Even if you have a relationship with two identical twins, go to the same places, do the same things, spend exactly the same amount of time with each, you will have two distinctly different relationships with each twin. Every person is capable of having "love" for more than one person.

It's not about being "enough" or "adequate". People everywhere are better than someone else at *something*. No matter what you do, there is someone out there who is better at it than you. Not many people fear going to restaurants on the off chance their spouse will fall in love with the chef who cooks better than they do. So why is so much emphasis put on sex, or kissing, or same sex partners vs. opposite sex partners? These are activities ... and someone, somewhere, will be better at it than you. Everyone is unique and every experience is unique. People are not replaceable and interchangeable.

Now, it's true that some people do exist who are willing to dump their current partners if someone better comes along. But really, I don't want to be involved with someone who doesn't love me for who I am, but is only temporarily interested in what I can do. I know I am a person worthy of love and happiness. My relationships are not built around what we can do for each other, but on who we are. If my partner loves me for who I am, then it doesn't matter if someone else can provide the same activity that I can, or even if they're better at it than I am. My partner loves me for me and enjoying an activity with someone else does not change that he loves me for me. Relationships are not a contest to be the "best" at something. Relationships are about opening yourself up to an intimate connection and allowing someone to open himself or herself up to you. Besides, what if you or your partner learns something wonderful and new from your outside relationships and brings it into your relationship so that you can also enjoy it together?

I've seen lots of non-monogamous relationships fail, therefore non-monogamy is flawed and monogamy is the solution.
Here's another bizarre concept. How many monogamous relationships have you seen fail? How many have you had yourself that failed? What exactly is "failed"? Is it a relationship that ended? Very few people remain in a relationship with the first person they ever got involved with anymore. I'm betting you've seen more monogamous relationships "fail", in terms of raw numbers, than non-monogamous relationships, yet that doesn't seem to descredit the monogamy system. In fact, many monogamous people are pointing at the failure rate and clambering for more effort at monogamous relating! Relationships "fail" and relationships end and that rarely has anything to do with the relationship structure, but rather it has to do with the compatibility of the people involved. Also, a relationship that ends is not necessarily a failure either. People naturally grow and evolve and sometimes they do not grow along complimentary paths to their partner. Some of us believe that any relationship that teaches you something, or brings joy to your life and has a natural conclusion is a successful relationship, even if it ends.

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