Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners (18 page)

After several short-lived relationships Ned bumped into Faith at a party, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Ned and Faith first met at a swing party back in the 1970s and became friends and lovers. Their children were best friends, and Ned had been buddies with Faith’s ex-husband, but they lost touch when Faith remarried and moved to another state. For the first several years, Ned and Faith were busy with their work and their new romance. They shared an occasional sexual adventure with another old lover, but Ned remembered the soap operas of open relationships twenty years earlier and felt cautious about going there again. Gradually, he discovered that in his absence polyamory had come into its own and that swinging had dramatically changed. “People seem more mature and more realistic and just generally better prepared for a nonmonogamous lifestyle than they used to be,” he observed. Before his retirement, Ned and Faith limited their involvement with others mostly to a few old friends, but now, with more leisure time, they have regular dates with two couples in their late fifties who they met at swing parties. Ned says that with one couple it’s purely sex; with the other there’s the possibility of a deeper relationship. “They’re both very intelligent and interesting, but they’re newbies, so we’re taking it very slow.”

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Ned also has intimate friendships with three other women. Jacqueline is in her early fifties and coping with a sexless marriage and has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement with her husband. She has a regular bimonthly date with Ned and Faith (who is bisexual and thoroughly enjoys the threesomes Ned arranges). Ama, who is a refuge from the war-torn Middle East, and Satya, an Indian woman who was raised in London, are both single mothers in their thirties who enjoy the sense of expanded family as well as the erotic connection with Ned and Faith. Ned’s grandchildren live thousands of miles away, and he likes including children into his life. While he’s clear that he’s just doing what he enjoys and is good at, Ned also gets satisfaction from knowing that he’s providing sexual gratification and emotional support for women who might otherwise have to do without.

How does a man pushing seventy manage five part-time women and one primary partner? Ned says it just happens by itself. “I didn’t think getting older was going to be like this,” he confesses. “It’s just incredible. I feel like a sultan. If I’d known it would be like this, I would have retired sooner.

And life just keeps getting better.” Ned is a high-energy, athletic man with a can-do attitude and a rare appreciation for both the safe, practical, predictable material side of life and the edgy, dangerous aliveness of new people, new places, and new experiences.

Ned’s parents divorced in the 1950s when he was in elementary school.

He spent most weekends with his father, but his mother, who was a feisty schoolteacher, openly had a series of lovers in the era before women’s liberation. Ned is emotionally intelligent and a good communicator, and while he’s comfortable in the world of men, he says that most of his friends are women because it’s been hard to establish close friendships with other men. His strong alpha persona may present a challenge to relating intimately with other men while making him a magnet for women, and that’s just fine with his fiery bisexual partner.

Graham is half Ned’s age and has a more androgenous appearance but also enjoys the affection of several women. He was born in a working-class neighborhood in London thirty-five years ago but now divides his time between several European cities where he is developing both his art career and his intimate relationships. He says that he began having spontaneous spiritual experiences as a young boy and as he grew older began seeking ways to understand the other dimensions that had been revealed to him. His quest led him to India, where he studied yoga and meditation, and he began to be interested in ways he could build a life
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based on spirituality. Graham remembers first exploring the idea of nonmonogamy as a teenager. “I was seeing a girl in a casual way when I met another girl who I also liked. As the original relationship was casual, I felt that it wouldn’t be an issue to also explore the possibility of being with the new girl. However, I always had a belief in being open and honest, so I explained to the new girl the situation with the first. She was okay with it at first but then felt it wasn’t for her. I continued to see the first girl, and we moved on to explore the possibilities of nonmonogamy together, including a triad situation a little while after. In fact, we continued to see each other for nearly a decade, and I am still friends with both of them some eighteen years later.”

While still in his early twenties, Graham began to see a young woman who would turn out to be a primary partner for ten years. At first, they decided they would have an open relationship, but before long, the lack of trust and communication led them to shift to monogamy. Graham commented that “the fact that we had to do this, in a sense to hold on to the relationship, was a sign of the future problems that led to our split. When we did finally split and she met a new guy, I felt a sense of
compersion
for the first time. I was genuinely happy for her and felt that I too could get back to a sense of who I really was away from the limitations I had built around myself and her.” Shortly afterward, he met his first openly polyamorous partner.

Graham continues, “We started off as a couple, but later I began to see her ex-partner. About eight months after that, we developed into a triad-type relationship. However, I don’t put any limits on how I or my partners should love—other than being safe, honest and open. Also around the same time, I became involved with a young woman with a small child. She was still involved with the father, and we explored the idea of her maintaining her relationship with him as the father and me as her lover, but unfortunately he was not able to accept the situation despite us spending time together and enjoying each other’s company.”

Graham has recently begun two new relationships but says it’s too early to tell how they will develop. One is with a fellow artist who identifies as polyamorous, and the other is new to all this and isn’t sure what she wants.

Graham feels that “my intimate relationships and connections with people form in a very organic way. I tend to focus on long-term bonds, and most of my lovers remain my close friends, although the exact configuration of my intimate partners may change.”

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Graham says that although he was drawn to multiple partners from an early age, more recently he’s come to appreciate that polyamory is an extension of the theme of unity consciousness, which has also led him to actively involve himself with spiritual, political, and social issues. Polyamory got more interesting to Graham when he “started to see that freeing up the way you love and holding your heart open to the possibilities that life may bring is a very powerful way to live. Being able to look at a partner and feel an outpouring of emotion and love for them, but without a need to be possessive or controlling, is genuinely life changing. My interest in equality, LGBTQ, and feminist ideas also seemed to be given greater power by exploring polyamory or relationship anarchy. When I first identified as polyamorous, I had already recently become vegan as an extension of my values, so becoming open to greater loving possibilities seemed the logical next step towards greater compassion, awareness, and understanding.”

Daniel, like Graham, is part of a new generation who are taking on leadership positions in the world of polyamory. Daniel is a twenty-three-year-old Portuguese graduate student in communication who lives in Lisbon with his divorced mother and his beautiful girlfriend, Sofia. For the past year, Daniel and Sofia have been in a triad with another young woman, and Daniel is also exploring a new relationship. Daniel was raised in the Portugal countryside in a very conservative family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

He describes himself as a “miniature adult” with few friends his own age.

His parents divorced while he was in grade school, and he moved to a rough urban neighborhood with his mother. He seems relieved to have escaped the religious atmosphere, but as a short, chubby bookworm, he was frequently bullied. Partly as a result of his direct experience of the dark side of masculinity and being surrounded by women while growing up, he’s gravitated both toward feminist theory and toward women for his social needs. He has very few male friends.

“It bothers me that I have been granted such power and benefits just for being male. I dislike the fact that my sex is equivalent to a whole history of submission and aggression,” he explains. “Male friendship usually has an aggressive edge, with which I’m not comfortable and a lack of any psychological and emotional intimacy—not to mention any nonaggressive physical contact—which definitely doesn’t suit me. So I tend to form more meaningful bonds with people of the opposite sex.”

Daniel says that his childhood experiences of discrimination, along with a strong sense of fairness and social justice, have led him to take a stand for what he believes in. He’s appeared on Portuguese television and given
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interviews to the press as well as being active in the local polyamorous community. “Discrimination is based on false perceptions, and the deconstruction of any form of discrimination is the deconstruction of all forms of discrimination. And one of the most insidious forms of discrimination and imbalance is gender based,” Daniel informed me. “I don’t think I’d be happy in a relationship with someone that wasn’t my equal. It would seem oppressive to me, and it would teach me nothing.”

As usual, I’m awed by the way this generation is able to go straight to the heart of the matter, but Daniel is less sanguine. “As for my generation, I wish I could be so optimistic. Yes, things are changing. Yes, gender imbalances are starting to fade. But not as quickly or as deeply as I’d like.

And there are lots of contradictory behaviors. Sexual experimentation goes hand in hand with polyphobia and mononormative and possessive relationships. Romantic love seems like the Holy Grail of serial monogamy, elevated to the notion of a state of pure nirvana but always out of reach, always elusive. There’s a frenzied hunt for the perfect relationship. I fear a society where an educated twenty-year-old woman can say, without the hint of a doubt, that it is impossible to love more than one person at the same time while she herself has behaviors that society would deem promiscuous and sinful. Then again, I’ve seen lots of people gladly accepting such things quite nicely. So, no, I don’t actually think my generation will make such a difference, not in the short run at least. We need to be disillusioned first, beyond hope, before we are willing to think outside the box.”

Polyamory can be a complex and demanding lovestyle. I often tell people that it requires a higher level of self-awareness and interpersonal skills than monogamy. Research on the personality traits shared by most polyamorous people has yet to be conducted, but many observers have noticed that certain characteristics are common among those choosing polyamory. Many of these traits are apparent in all the personalities profiled in this chapter.

A Talent for Intimate Relating

Perhaps the most basic trait found among those attracted to and successful in polyamorous relationships is that they have a talent for intimate relationships. Some people have a gift for music, and others are natural
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athletes. If you have a gift for connecting with others, for giving and receiving affection, and if you’re empathic and compassionate and enjoy sharing life’s pleasures and sorrows with a group of people, then you have a talent for relating intimately. Without this talent, it can be a struggle to handle even one meaningful relationship. People who have a gift for relating find that they have the capacity for opening their hearts to many and greatly enjoy becoming involved in other people’s lives. This talent sometimes leads people into one of the helping professions—nursing, psychotherapy, teaching, or social work. Such people make good managers, community organizers, parents, and sometimes politicians.

High Self-Esteem

Any intimate relationship is difficult without a sense of self-worth, which is not dependent on validation from someone else. Relying on a partner to make you feel desirable, special, or lovable inevitably leads to wanting to control and possess this source of positive regard. A partner’s attraction to someone else, whether or not it’s acted on, will be perceived as a threat if you need constant reassurance that you’re okay. It takes plenty of self-confidence to be willing to share your lovers with others, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be found lacking in some essential quality.

High self-esteem makes it possible to face the unknown without excessive fears. It transforms problems into challenges that can be met with courage, persistence, and creativity. Even though the security, predictability, and control that monogamy seems to offer often turns out to be an illusion, polyamory tends to put people in the fire of uncertainty on a regular basis.

People who’ve developed a confident awareness that they’re capable of riding out whatever life brings their way are more open to surrendering to the flow of love.

Ability to Multitask

Some people function best doing one thing at a time with no distractions. Others find it easy to track several different processes at once by shifting back and forth as needed. Such people often prefer the variety and stimulation of having a broader focus. People who can juggle tasks, projects, and quickly changing priorities usually have the ability to juggle several intimate relationships as well without dropping the ball.

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A Love for Intensity