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COMING OUT AS POLY
TSSULLIVAN@amherst.edu
Prism Magazine (Volume IX)
In recent years, the reality of homosexual families has cast
doubt on the
traditional assumption that a marriage must consist of one
man and one woman.
Although homosexual marriage is the most prominent challenge
to this assumption,
there are other unconventional family structures currently
being explored. In
this article, I will discuss the concept of families and
marriages consisting of
more than two people. This article is also a "coming out"
article, because this
is the first time I have publicly stated my interest in
forming a polyamorous
family. In speaking openly about poly I feel a kind of
discomfort that I have
seen before in lesbian, bisexual and gay friends when they
come out with their
orientations.
The word generally used for these larger families is "polyamory",
a term that
literally means "many loves". I will discuss why I have come
to support
polyamory, what advantages this family structure has over
the traditional
two-person family, and how realistic it is to expect that
these views may be
implemented in American society.
The core of my viewpoint is that I think there are no
compelling justifications
for the conventional belief that a family should be based
upon the bonding of a
"magic number" of two people. I should clearly state that I
see nothing wrong
with a traditional family. My claim is that a family based
on more than two
adults is also acceptable, and for some people has
advantages over
the two-adult family.
There are two very different ways in which a family can be
polyamorous. The
better-known form is "open marriage", in which each of the
partners may love
people who intend to remain outside the nuclear family. The
other form expands
the nuclear family to three or more adults. Some poly
families blend a
combination of these basic ideas. This article will explore
the concept of a
nuclear family of more than two adults.
On those rare occasions when people think of polyamory, they
often assume a
two-parent nuclear family and contemplate open marriage in
that context. The
idea of a two-parent nuclear family is very firmly ingrained
in our social
consciousness. I want to challenge this assumption and
present the possibility
that a nuclear family might have more than two adults. There
are no specific
bounds for the number of adults that might collectively form
a poly household,
but the most common sizes are between three and six.
I can trace my support of polyamory back many years to when
I was listening to
"Why does it have to be", a song by Restless Heart with the
lyrics Why does it
have to be wrong or right?
Why does it have to be one way or the other? Why do we have
to hurt one to love
another?
Tell me, why does it have to be? Until I heard this song, I
had accepted the
traditional paradigm of finding one "true love" and forming
a two-person
relationship.
I knew that I had experienced strong love for a few people
at the same time, but
I had never before thought of questioning the paradigm. I
found the song very
powerful because it spoke about the elephant in the living
room -- something
obvious and ignored. If there are two people with whom one
shares love and one
is forced to choose between them, there will be incredible
pain. I imagined myself in such a situation, and the song's
questions led me to think about the possibility of avoiding
the pain by somehow avoiding that kind of choice. At the
time I had never heard of the possibility of an expanded
nuclear family, and did not know how my thoughts might find
expression in the
world, but I felt that I would be giving up too soon if I
didn't search for another path.
Shortly before coming to college, I was introduced to
polyamory through Paula
Johnson's science-fiction book "Fallway". In her society,
the normal family was
based on a group marriage of three men and three women. A
friend introduced me
to Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", the classic of
poly literature,
during my first semester at Amherst. In recent times I have
found a newsgroup on
the Internet devoted to the subject, "alt.polyamory". The
presence of these
books and discussion groups has provided moral support,
because I know that
other people also think that polyamorous marriages and
families are a realistic
and desirable possibility in our society.
After giving the topic serious thought, I have come to the
conclusion that I
would prefer to live in an expanded nuclear family. A
traditional two-parent
family would also be acceptable, but there are some
interesting advantages to
polyamory. My line of reasoning is related to "family
values". I think that a
poly family would be a better place for me to raise
children, develop emotional
bonds and stimulate intellectual thought. I wonder how
shocked a conservative
would be at the thought of "family values" being used to
rationally defend the
virtues of a poly family structure.
One major advantage of polyamory is that the adults would
find a wider range of
interests and personalities in their partners. People are
complex creatures, and
it is impossible for the facets of two people to overlap
completely. The larger
number of people, all closely and deeply bonded to each
other, would create a
much richer psychological and intellectual environment. A
three-person family
has three two-person dynamics, and a four-person family has
six. Each of these
dynamics would have a life of its own. It is part of human
nature that we share
different parts of ourselves with different friends; in a
poly family, we could
develop several of these friendships deeply without worrying
about the
possibility of drifting apart. Through these multiple
soulmates, more aspects of our personalities could find
expression within the framework of loving, committed
relationships.
Some people might think that the greater number of
two-person dynamics within an
expanded nuclear family would make it harder to keep the
nuclear family stable.
It is true that there are more dynamics where problems can
arise, and the
partners would need to be conscious of this fact, but I
think that the larger
number of dynamics would actually provide stability. In a
two-adult family, each
person is the only soulmate for the other. If one has
important interests that
are irrelevant to the other, there is the potential for
discord. With more
soulmates, there would be fewer unmatched interests. In a
poly family, no one
would need to be the perfect match for another person.
This richer environment would also be valuable for raising
children. Because
children tend to adopt aspects of their parents'
personalities, a poly family
would give children a wider range of personality traits to
use as building
blocks. More parents would provide a wider range of
knowledge and interests, and
this would be invaluable for providing a quality home
environment.
Multiple parents would simplify the logistics of raising
children. One of the
biggest problems in modern families is that parents can't
get time to themselves
without the expense of a babysitter. In a poly family, any
two or three people
could leave the children in the care of another parent. This
would give the
parents a chance to refresh their emotional connections and
experience aspects
of life that would be inaccessible to those with children in
tow or a babysitter
to pay. Family values activists note that raising children
is far easier in a
two-parent family than a single-parent family, and I claim
that a three-parent
family is a quantum leap better in this respect. If two
parents are better than
one, why not three or four?
I see this line of argument as a modern solution to the
fragmentation of
community and extended family. In the past, you could depend
on relatives to
occasionally help take care of the children, and on friends
to remain in the
same community. In modern society, our kin rarely live
nearby and we can't count
on friends staying in town. The expanded nuclear family
builds a small
dependable community in the midst of modern mobility.
In the long term, a poly family would be better able to
sustain the inevitable
trauma of life. Consider what happens when someone is
injured, or has a serious
illness. In a two-adult family, the other partner must take
care of the family
and household while bearing the emotional trauma alone. In a
poly family, the
presence of at least two other adults would make it unlikely
that anyone would
be put in this difficult situation.
Although polyamory makes sense to me now, the idea didn't
occur to me when I
first thought about the problems of sharing love with two
people. I think there
were two reasons I failed to make the leap. First, the
concept of poly has a bad
reputation from male-dominated polygamy, so I didn't even
consider the
possibility that a multi-partner marriage could be based on
equality. Second,
one can't have more than two heterosexual partners without
some pair being
platonic, so I never even thought beyond one male and one
female.
I suspect that these two objections would occur to others,
so they deserve a
response. To the first point, polyamory can be as equitable,
or as biased, as
any kind of marriage. There are two responses to the second
objection. First,
there is no reason why platonic pairs would be a problem. It
would require some
thought since we can't draw a parallel to traditional
marriage, but
people have dealt with this issue without running into any
insurmountable
problems. Second, my initial analysis reflected my bias
towards heterosexuality.
If the family includes homosexuals or bisexuals, you could
have a fully
non-platonic group that contains more than two people. For
example, one common
poly structure is a straight person of one gender with two
bisexual people of
the opposite gender.
Forming a poly family is complicated in our society. We are
surrounded by models
of the traditional family, but poly is uncharted territory.
A poly family is
likely to form by the joining of two couples, or a couple
with a single person.
In either case, the new two-person bonds need to be allowed
to develop without
being overshadowed by the existing bonds. The worst thing
that can happen is for a single person to feel like the
"third person" in a
triad -- there should be no "third" person, but this takes
some special effort.
People forming a poly family need to develop some special
sensitivity to make it
work. One possible solution is for the new pairs to spend
time together, and for
the old pairs to spend less time together until the poly
relationship has become
more equitable.
Even getting to that stage is difficult in this society. We
live in a world
where people think in terms of couples, and poly dating is
just about
impossible. People have a natural tendency to think that
couples (or the people
in them) cannot be dated, but that's a necessary step
somewhere along the path
to an expanded nuclear family. When two people are together,
it is assumed that
a third person could join only by breaking up the existing
relationship. Since
this is taboo, it is almost impossible to engage in the
social dynamics
necessary for forming a poly family (such as flirting with
and dating people in
other relationships, or indicating a serious interest in
someone if you are in a
relationship yourself).
When a poly family forms, the next problem is social
recognition. People are
starting to accept homosexual families, but very few people
have even thought
about the idea of poly families. As legally unrecognized
families, poly families
face many of the same problems as homosexual families.
Zoning laws often
restrict single-family residences to people related by blood
or marriage, tax
returns give special benefits to married couples and
insurance forms allow for
an employee to extend coverage to his/her spouse.
I think that marriage, distilled to its essential qualities,
is a situation
where people live together, are connected by deep emotional
bonds, and are
committed to staying together and supporting each other.
Poly families can meet
these criteria. Since our laws make the formal recognition
of marriage
important, I believe that poly marriage should be legal.
Poly is still too rare
to have appeared in the cultural debate over the meaning of
family and marriage,
but it presents an interesting question that may help
illuminate the necessary
and sufficient conditions for the word "family".
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Do you always, before you connect with someone with whom
you're
attracted, talk with that person's lovers?
I attended the Network for a New Culture's community meeting
in the mountains of Oregon and found myself in the middle of
an earnest debate that, bottom line, concerned alternate
ways of connecting with new lovers.
Model 1: RESPECT EXISTING RELATIONSHIPS BEFORE YOU CONNECT
On one side of the debate, my wife Janet and I advocate
complete
candor with the significant others of our
would-be-lovers–before we
connect sexually with these prospects. Before we even tell
anyone
either of us is attracted to someone, Janet and I speak
privately
about whether to communicate our attraction to the objects
of desire
one or both of us has. If both Janet and I agree to go
ahead, we ask
the person(s) if they're interested in getting to know and
perhaps
become friends and then lovers with us.
If our prospective lovers say, "Yes, let's explore going
deeper with
each other," we ask to speak with each of their significant
others
before we and the prospectives engage sexually. If, when we
communicate with our prospective lovers' lovers, these
significant
others say. Okay," we proceed to get to know each other with
the
intention of assessing whether to become more intimate.
If the significant others of our prospective lovers say,
"Wait till
we too get to know you and Janet," we honor this. If they
say, "Wonderful, we fully support you connecting." we
proceed to
develop the friendship that can lead to poly loving.
If, however, the significant others of our prospective
lovers
indicate that it would create distress for them which they
wish to
avoid, we keep our relating to the would-be-prospectives on
the level
of friendship and share no sexuality. We choose to create no
pain
for others; it hurts us to distress others, so we refrain
from sex
with their lovers.
Model 2: FOLLOW YOUR BLISS SPONTANEOUSLY & LIVE WITH
CONSEQUENCES
On the other hand in the debate we had at the conference,
some polys
took the position that each person was autonomous and
needn't consult
anyone–wife, lover or otherwise, nor need their perspectives
consult
anyone before engaging in sex. If their prospective lovers'
loversget uptight over it, too bad, that's life and maybe
pain's what the prospective's lovers need to grow–if they
even have a candor commitment.
We advocate ahimsa–harmlessness–candor, transparency. We
believe in
truth, disclosure and kindness.
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World Polyamory Association 
