Polyamory:
What It Is and What It
Ain't
~ An Address
to the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
Sunday, July 10, 1994
I must admit I'm not sure what to make of what I'm about to do
here this morning. It's one thing to be asked, as I have been before, to speak
to a room full of your fellow Unitarians about something that falls within
your realm of professional expertise. It's quite something else to be prepared
to speak about your own personal lifestyle choice, particularly when that
lifestyle choice is unconventional. Even more particularly when it involves
sex.
I'm up here this morning because for the past six months or so I've been
leading a discussion group on the subject of polyamory which meets upstairs in
one of the church classrooms every Thursday night. The group has not been one
of the officially sponsored programs of the church, though I've been grateful
to the Adult Program Committee for letting us use the room at a very nominal
rental. There have been several church members who have attended the group
more or less regularly, and there have also been a few people from outside the
church who seem to have developed a serious interest in Unitarianism through
their exposure from attending the group. This has really pleased me, because,
as a life long Unitarian and a new member of the church board, I'm concerned
with seeing the church grow. I also think that one of the most important
functions a Unitarian church can serve in its community is that of a haven for
provocative people, a place where they can continue to be provocative yet
experience a sense of belonging and community. I know that's what this church
meant to my parents and what it has meant to me.
In any case, there seems to have been some curiosity building in the
congregation as to what polyamory is and what goes on upstairs every Thursday
night. And so the summer program committee has asked me to talk this morning
on the topic: Polyamory--What It Is and What It Ain't.
First, and most obviously, polyamory is a word. For most of us it's a new and
unfamiliar word; it was certainly so for me as recently as about a year and a
half ago when I stumbled on it while browsing certain computer networks. The
idea behind the word was not new; the idea had been alive in my heart and mind
since I first started philosophizing about intimate relationships at the age
of eleven or twelve. The word itself was new to me, however, and in fact I
think it is absolutely new, having been coined in just the last few years by a
man with the unlikely name of Otter G'Zellabout whom more later.
Polyamory can be defined as the philosophy and practice of loving more than
one other person at a time. Synonyms for polyamory are responsible, ethical,
and intentional nonmonogamy. Love, in this context, is a close, serious,
intimate, more or less stable, sensuous, affectionate bond which exists
between one person and another person or group of people. In almost all cases
this kind of love involves some sexual or at least some intense physically
sensuous behavior.
Besides love, two other words which stand out in the definition of polyamory
are philosophy and practice. Now, there's a lot of nonmonogamous behavior
being practiced in our society. There are single people out playing the field
and married people out cheating on their spouses. This is not polyamory.
Responsible nonmonogamy involves a conscious philosophical commitment to an
alternative style of living and loving. It involves conscious and consensual
agreements between and amongst loving people, and not just the breaking loose
of frustrated hormones.
As so defined, polyamory is really a quite generic term. It covers a wide
range of different lifestyle alternatives. At the center of that spectrum is
the fairly wellknown idea of the open marriage, or open couple. In this case,
there are two people who have established a longterm commitment to each other.
They may or may not be legally married but they think of each other as
spouses, life partners, primary lovers, or whatever other term they might use.
There is, however, an agreement between the two of them that each can pursue
and experience love and sex outside their relationship without destroying
their own commitment. These outside relationships are often referred to as
secondaries.
At one end of the polyamory spectrum are the arrangements known as group
marriages. In a group marriage there are more than two people; three, four, or
more who all consider themselves essentially married to each other. These
arrangements are obviously not legal marriages in the United States at this
time, yet people in group marriages consider themselves collective
spouses/cohusbands, sister/wives and usually live together, sharing household
expenses, chores, and parenting duties. Group marriages can be
"closed" or "open" depending on whether or not the
agreements within the group allow for sexual and loving relationships outside
the committed group. People in closed group marriages have made up another
special "poly" word for themselves. They call what they do
"polyfidelity," and refer to themselves as
"polyfides."
The other end of the spectrum contains less formal and structured arrangements
called intimate networks. These are flexible but more or less stable
"expanded families" made up of erotic friends who have relationships
of varying intimacy, intensity, and commitment. Intimate networks may include
mixtures of open couples, open group marriages, and singles. People in
intimate networks often talk about "primary, secondary, and tertiary
partners" to describe the varying levels of intimacy and commitment in
their relationships.
So, that covers the range of practices included in polyamory. But, what about
the philosophical underpinnings of what polyamorists do? The philosophies also
cover something of a range, and to tell you about them I'll have to give you a
bit of a list.
First of all, some polys would say that their polyamorous philosophy is
nothing more than a straightforward rational acceptance of the realities of
human nature. These polys would say that American culture is perpetrating a
fraud on the people. The culture would like us to think that human beings,
along with bald eagles, gibbons, and whooping cranes, are among the tiny
fraction of animal species who are naturally and biologically monogamous in
their mating habits. The facts are that the vast majority of human cultures
studied by anthropologists and sociologists allow for some form of polygamy or
other sanctioned polyamorous relating, and over 90% of mammalian and primate
species are nonmonogamous in their mating patterns including our closest
genetic cousins, the great apes. (Especially the Bonobo, the most human of
species -Roan) Even in our own culture the statistics on divorce and
marital infidelity make it clear that the isolated nuclear family built around
a lifelong monogamous couple as a norm and standard in our society is pretty
much a myth.
The phenomenon of so called "serial monogamy" may be an unconscious
compromise between the cultural ideal of monogamy and the facts of human
nature. Yet, recently I encountered a polyamorist woman on a computer network
who was pondering what set her apart from her monogamous and serial monogamous
neighbors. She said she finally decided that the essential element that makes
her polyamorous is that "I refuse to accept the myth that I have to stop
loving one person before I start loving another."
There are other polys who view their polyamory as a look backward toward
better times in the history of human society. Some of them look no further
back than to the late nineteenth century in upstate New York, where there
existed an intriguing social experiment called the Oneida Community. The
Oneidas were a heretical Christian sect who established an agrarian commune in
rural New York and coexisted peaceably with their conventional neighbors for
about forty years. In the context of nineteenth century America, the Oneidas
practiced some concepts which even today would be considered futuristic in
some circles. As best they could conceive it given their cultural background,
they practiced equality between the sexes. They practiced family planning and
contraception, and sex for recreation and pleasure/bonding as well as
reproduction. They also practiced a concept called "complex
marriage" in which every adult member of the community was considered
essentially married to every other member.
Some of these polys look back considerably further than the Oneidas to find
their inspiration, back to a much more ancient, and perhaps even mythological
time. This was a time before Christ, before Moses, before the rise of
patriarchy, and before the subjugation and chattelization of women. In those
times, it is said, no one cared or even knew about paternity and lines of
inheritance, and the sexual ownership of one person by another was unknown.
Women were then independent agents revered as creators of life and empowered
to bestow their favors and pleasures when and where they saw fit.
Yet another group of polys look not to the past for their inspiration but
toward the future. These are the speculators and projectors, who are concerned
not so much with how things are or were but with how they might be the
possible futures of human society. Many of these people draw their inspiration
from the writings of science fiction authors, and, in fact, organized science
fiction fandom appears to be one of the richest veins of polyamory in America
today. These people would say, look, science fiction authors have given us the
ideas for space travel, nuclear submarines, communication satellites, and
robots and we have picked up those ideas and run with them and see what
marvelous things we have created in our world. See what even more marvelous
things we expect to create in the near future. Then these people would say,
look, science fiction authors don't just give us ideas for physics, biology,
and engineering; they also give us ideas for new ways we could relate to each
other, new ways we could love each other, new family structures and new ways
our society could be for us. It's about time we picked up those ideas and ran
with them; these are the really exciting possibilities science fiction offers
us. We don't even have to wait for Western Electric or General Dynamics to do
it for us... these ideas are things we can put into effect in our own lives.
All we need is the courage and determination to, as the song says, "try
something new."
Finally, a last group of polyamorists view their polyamory not as a look
toward the past or the future, but as a tenet of their religion. We know, of
course, that there is some uncounted number of unreconstructed Mormons living
on the back roads of Utah, and an uncountable number of Muslims and others all
over the world who practice some form of religiously sanctioned polygamy. In
my experience, however, most of the conscious religious polyamorists in
America today are not Mormons or Muslims but Humanists or Pagans or, in the
case of people like myself, both at once. Christianity tells us that sex is
sin. For many Pagans, sex is the great cosmic creative power of the Universe
working itself out on the human level. For us, the joining of a man and a
woman in sexual passion is a symbolic reenactment of the joining of the God
and the Goddess in a continuous cosmic copulation out of which flows the
creation of all things. For us, sex is a religious ritual, an item of magickal
practice, a meditative discipline at the very least it is a celebration of the divine spark
in ourselves and our partners and the link between us and Mother Nature and
the infinite.
Pagans have a spiritual equivalent of marriage called handfasting. Since it is
not a legal contract, handfasting does not involve some of the arbitrary
restrictions of licensed marriage. Handfasting can occur between members of
the same sex, members of the opposite sex, or amongst groups of people in
polyamorous arrangements. The details of the handfasting agreement, such as
its duration and its degree of exclusivity, are open to negotiation based on
the individual needs and desires of the people involved.
One of the largest and oldest incorporated Pagan organizations in America is
called the Church of All Worlds. It was founded in the late 1960's and is
still led by the aforementioned Otter G'Zell, the coiner of the term
polyamory. CAW holds the distinction of being the only organized American
denomination I know of which explicitly supports polyamorous relating amongst
its members. The church is organized into small congregations called
"Nests," and some, though apparently not all, of these Nests have
been intentionally set up not only as religious fellowships but also as
functioning intimate networks.
So, I have discussed at some length some of the things polyamory is, and its
foundations in science and religion, the past and the future. I will now turn
my attention to some of the things that polyamory "ain't." One of
the first things that most polys would tell you that polyamory ain't is; it
ain't swinging. Swinging has sometimes been called sport sex or spouse
swapping. I would define it as more or less organized recreational sexual
activities for married couples and singles. Now, certainly, from a strictly
sexual point of view that would constitute nonmonogamous behavior; and, I have
no reason to doubt that many swingers approach what they do with a sincere
sense of responsibility and philosophical commitment. I know that a number of
polys I have met have engaged in swinging in the past and may be continuing to
do so; and, I expect that there are swingers who have, over a period of time,
developed some genuine supportive and intimate friendships among their fellow
swingers. So, there is undoubtedly some overlap between the world of swinging
and the world of poly. But insofar as swinging focuses on casual sexual
pleasure while polyamory aims at enduring intimate relationships, the two
philosophies and practices are significantly different and should be kept
separate in our minds.
Another thing that polyamory ain't is, it ain't "free love" in the
1960s sense of the term. It's true that many of the polys I know are people
who grew up through the '60s, and lots of them probably still hold dear some
of the values of that turbulent and inspired era. Still, I think a fair amount
of maturation has taken place in the intervening decades. Just as it would
take a fair level of financial maturity to shell out the $135.00 a ticket to
attend the return to Woodstock scheduled for later this year, so it takes a
fair level of personal and emotional maturity to practice polyamory in the
1990s. Polyamory is about real enduring intimate relationships among real
individuals, not some ethereal notion that everyone should love everyone else
and sex should be free as a sneeze.
The last and most important thing that I'm going to say polyamory ain't -- is
that it ain't "THE ANSWER." If you are looking for a quick and easy
answer to all your personal and relationship problems, polyamory ain't it. I
you are looking for a quick and easy answer to all your personal and
relationship problems, you can't look to polyamory; you can't look, for that
matter, to monogamy; in fact if you are looking anywhere except deep inside
yourself you are looking in the wrong place, and even if you are looking
inside you're not likely to find quick and easy answers... life isn't that
way. Polyamory is a complex and challenging lifestyle, a path which, in the
words of ObiWan Kenobi, is "not to be travelled lightly." I wish I
could, but I can not guarantee that the handsome and charming person who
invites you into a polyamorous relationship necessarily has your best interest
at heart. There are horror stories in the annals of polyamory, some of which
we have heard told in our Thursday discussion group and some of which I have
lived through in my own life. They must be owned and acknowledged, though we
may console ourselves with the thought that the annals of monogamy are at
least as horrific.
If you listen to me or to someone else or you read a book and a voice inside
you says, "I think I may be polyamorous," well, maybe you are, and
maybe that's worth exploring for you. I want to clarify, though, what I mean
by explore. I mean read; I mean listen; I mean discuss; I mean consider. Don't
jump into this lifestyle because it looks like an attractive practice. You
need to be clear that you have a philosophical commitment to what you're about
to do before you do it. If you are now in a committed monogamous relationship
you must be extremely clear about that philosophical commitment and how
important it is to you, because before long it may well be all that you have.
Polys, like any group who live on the outskirts of our society's moral
village, can live lonely and frustrating lives.
If you listen to me or to someone else or you read a book and a voice inside
you says, "I think I'm monogamous," well, probably you are, and
probably you should let it stand at that. I don't know, and I don't think
anyone does, whether polys are born or made; I do know that I have no desire
to set myself up in the business of manufacturing them. I lead discussion
groups and give talks and write articles on polyamory because I believe in
freedom of choice, and because I believe in the importance of taking informed
responsibility for the choices we make. I believe that a free and open
societyof the sort that I believe Unitarianism is and that we all hope America
can become values diversity and has room in it for responsible people of all
stripes, from Christian to Pagan, from celibate to libertine, from monogamist
to polyfide to intimate networker. These are choices to be made seriously and
soberly and not to be palmed off on our gods, our society, or the ghosts of
our parents.
As a poet I know recently said while pondering the conundrums of sex and
relationships:
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