Polyamory and Swinging are on a cline, a polarity system with much in common across the board and with a lot of interaction between the poles. Adventurers on this new paradigm juggle emotions and ideas going up and down, back and forth to eventually settle somewhere along the continuum that meets their needs, wants and desires in each moment in time. 

My husband and I are counselors specializing on the lifestyles. We often recommend to those couples who're just opening up their relationships that they begin to explore polyamory by visiting a swing club or party where they begin feeling what it would be like to share their lovers. As voyeurs, they watch how other couples negotiate their relationships. They observe how couples first express how they may want to share their partners then watch as they actively interact with other people. This is an ideal way for couples to get their feet wet. 

Think of it this way. Swinging's the fast track on the lifestyle highway. For many the best thing to do is get out of their heads, quit analyzing things to death, dive in, get wet, and feel what it's like. Once you're in there and you're soaked to the gills, come up for air and sort it out.

 But you can only do this if you're doing so with a good heart and agree going in that you're going to experience it to the max and commit to talking it out afterwards. This is not a blame or shame thing. No manipulating, guilt-tripping or controlling. You're both doing this up front in a consensual agreement and you discuss and commit to what you're willing to do and experience before you go to the party or club. And, you might also agree to seek professional help afterwards if it proves to be too much for your egos and emotional well being. But I think you'll be fine as long as you're conscious and aware going into this experiment. Think of it as an adventure and it will be simply that.

 Sexual intimacy seems to be far less threatening than emotional intimacy for many. That's probably why there are more swingers than polyamorists. Polyamory requires emotional connection, which for many seems to be more sticky and complex as it often activates deeply rooted emotional and psychological triggers which may uncover intense areas of discomfort which could take some time to work through and resolve.
 
While swinging's main focus could be simply frolic and fun on a Saturday night, polyamory may open a can of worms and destabilize one or more individuals in the relationship. This destabilization could take days, sometimes even weeks or months to resolve. With that in mind you may wonder why attempt polyamory at all if it's so difficult? 

But it's just like anything that's hard, the rewards outweigh the intense efforts. Those who create conscious polyamorous relationships can access a deep level of joy and bliss that's like no other. It's like rediscovering a part of ourselves, a way we once were when we lived in tribe and depended on one another for our very survival. The connectiveness we feel in poly loving is like home, Source, the loving oneness we feel when we return home to God/The Creator of All. 

I'm certain it doesn't really completely compare to the Loving Oneness of the All That There Is. But the feeling of loving more than one, the expansiveness, freedom, joy and recognition of our ability to love endlessly resonates with Universal Consciousness and that feeling of total completeness. To the best of our ability while alive and in a physical body, loving more than one in complete, total connection and intimacy is the closest thing to heaven one can experience while still alive and living on the Earth plane. 

As one who has experimented with the many different ways of being in relationship, there are treasures in each choice.

I love the time I have alone with my husband. I get lost in the depth of connection of monogamy, going deep with one person and knowing each other like we know the backs of our own hands. The joy I feel brings tears to my eyes. My heart swells. I feel a peace I've never known. 

Yet, I've shared my body with more than one person at a time. I've had sex without being in love and with just a little more than a sexual attraction for that person. And I have to admit there was something about that state of non-attachment that created a thrill. While that's not my most favorite way of being, in daring to experiment, I discovered the turn on that swinger's feel and developed a greater understanding for their perspective. 

I've also shared both my body and my love with more than one person at a time. I found that way of loving is rich, deep and every bit as rewarding as the time I share alone with my husband in our monogamous moments. I feel wholeness, a completeness that resonates with something old, familiar or beyond what I know that is wondrous, desirous, intimate and pulls me towards it. I am drawn forward to something that I imagine is greater than what I've already experienced, which is pretty darned awesome. So I am excited by the possibilities. Yet it remains, like the magical ring on a merry-go-round where my arms are too short and we're going to fast to grasp and take it as my own. I can't, at this point in time, quite get there. 

I feel confused, perplexed, yet I realize the main difficulty I've had is maintaining intense intimacy with more than one on an ongoing basis because I've personally not been able to create an All-Chakra relationship with more than just my husband. Yet, I've had many, successful sequential relationships. I am perhaps a serial monogamist in a way. And most have ended for one reason or another. But I want to succeed with something more. So I keep searching, going within, diving into my soul then reaching out, exploring some more, feeling intense emotions, some very painful, yet always driven forward, onward towards that destination which I feel deep in my soul exists and is possible. 

This is my third marriage. My husband and I have been together almost thirteen years. We're very stable with each other and comfortable with the status quo and could be happy for the rest of our lives just as things are. I know that sounds illogical, conflicting. Yet both are true. I could remain here just as we are or experience what is yet to be. I am unattached to the outcome yet feel in my bones I'm but an infant, I've just begun and the road is long, full of wonder and many great things.
 
I'm seeking those who want to share on all levels. I have one All-Chakra relationship with my husband, which means we relate in all ways on all energy centers. Most people relate only on one or two or a few chakra levels. For example, they may connect sexually and emotionally. But they don't want to live together. Or maybe they have different spiritual or political beliefs. Perhaps they're intellectually incompatible. Maybe they want to live in different parts of the world. Maybe they differ in their desires for children. Or perhaps they want children, but have different moral systems and ideas on how to raise them. Their lives become about compromise. 

Perhaps things become more about withholds and resentments over time.

While relationships which are founded on connections with a few chakras, may work, I personally find that All-Chakra relationships are far more fulfilling. Since I've created one, I now am perhaps spoiled and desire to create more than one. Maybe it's impossible.

 Who knows? But I am open to the experiment and so I put it out there for the Universe to deliver if it's for the highest good of those who chose to participate.

 In our All-Charka relationship addressing our base chakra, my husband and I support one another financially, emotionally and psychologically. We share life and all our resources. We balance our internal masculine and feminine energies through working through the difficulties we encounter in our relationship. We take personal responsibility for our part in our contra tamps and resolve to do better in the future. We express our wants, needs and desires, make behavioral requests, settle on behaviors we can both agree to without giving up our personal integrity and move through life to the next challenge which we realize helps us define ourselves in relationship to one another. We recognize that life's challenges are gifts that help us determine who we are in the world and focus more intently on what we wish to accomplish in our short dance on this planet.

 We share love, make love, give each other orgasms, make our lives blissful and orgasmic by sharing sexually. We balance chemicals, release toxins, heal disease and negativities, create maximum health and harmony. We set aside all other things and create time for sharing love and sharing energy so that energy runs through all our chakras and throughout our bodies releasing harmful emotions. Our lovemaking allows us to access universal consciousness and divine bliss through orgiastic states and kundalini rising.

 We empower one another to be our best and to remember what we need to do to fulfill our soul's destiny. We discover why we were born and help one another accomplish the goals our souls created for our life's journey through this plane of existence.

 We continuously move energy through our hearts, recognizing our loving connection and the warm, intense feelings that reside there as we love each other totally, unconditionally to the best of our human ability. We do this by learning how to both give and receive love as we recognize that humans need to feel both in order to feel complete.

We commit ourselves to transparency and our own personal reprogramming and healing. Through our interactions and ongoing therapy we learn how to constellate our own Inner Mothers, Fathers and Lovers through Imago and other psychological processes. We use these tools to work through our parental imprints we learned at our Mother's breasts and take personal responsibility for our own programming/reprogramming, cultural conditioning and religious programming. We learn how to become emotionally mature and stop projecting our stuff on to one another. We are accountable for our own mistakes and shortcomings, refrain from blame and shame while learning how to navigate through life with integrity. 

We communicate consciously (as best we can), speak kindly with love. When we forget, we gently remind each other and return to loving tones, energy, body language and vibratory frequencies that harmonize and soothe each other. 

We encourage our vision centers to create situations that serve one another and all humanity, allowing us and the world to live and love in peace. We envision our connection to the world and the Universe, remember that we are always connected and that the illusion of separateness exists so that we can create diversity and experiences. We realize that harming each other or anyone is like chopping off our own hands and plucking out our own eyes. We dedicate our lives to ahimsa, do no harm and return to love whenever we falter, get back on the path whenever we are lost. We know that we can only get there together and through loving oneness we are ultimately self serving. There's no true altruism. There's only Self and that self includes all that there is. 

So for myself, I seek those who are willing to share not only resources, sex and love, but those who are willing to do life together, and that includes doing the daily dull drums of life, along with its convoluted complexities guaranteed to drive one mad, or at least to the point where arguments erupt. It's easy to be sweet with one another. 

But even perpetual sweetness can become sickingly sweet. It's not real. It's fake. It's far better to be authentic, put all your cards out on the table, do what it takes to get over it, move past the facades and embrace life fully, including getting to know one another and more importantly, realizing who you are by the feedback life delivers. 

It's far more difficult yet ultimately rewarding to be totally authentic with all emotions, including the negative ones, and remain free of judgments and the tendency to reject and run away. Yet to witness all in a multiple person relationship structure or pod, with all its mirrors reflecting back, allowing the expression of all emotions, including the difficult ones, creates the growth necessary for transcendence. As we move to the point where each member can accept, love, emphasize with and embrace their own disowned parts that are projected out into the beloved who stands before them, is to transcend our individuated, separate self sense, merge consciousness and KNOW that we are ONE being expressing lives in separate bodies. 

So to come full circle, many who try swinging switch to polyamory after a while because they do tend to find friends and develop true relationships. But even that's not set in stone because life's more complex than that. As people come and go in our lives, be it in monogamous relationships or other open style relating systems, we learn and grow from the experiences we have and as we change, what we want and need changes with the cycles of our lives. 

We find there are seasons, times to be alone, times to be in intimate relationships and as life unfolds and people come and go, either through breaking up and making up or perhaps through the most final way to leave, death, we individually must redefine ourselves and make new choices and decisions all along the way. 

I had to face death, the ultimate, most painful of all separations recently when my husband became very ill and almost died. Needless to say, that didn't feel good on many, many levels. But what I realized from that experience is that personally I like polyamory because I don't like being alone very much. Dealing with the death of a loved one has got to be easier to deal with if you have more than one partner with whom to share your grief. 

Yet, because of my life's path I can understand the entire spectrum of the Poly/Swinging continuum. I've had a half dozen or so major relationships, three of which resulted in marriages with a couple other live-in situations sans certificates. I found my marriages and live-ins to be the most rewarding of all my relationships, while at the same time the most challenging. 

Living together is definitely the hardest. Having sex then leaving to manage the daily business of life is less complicated but somehow, to me personally, not as rich. Episodes just don't do much for me. I need connection, continuity. When it comes down to it, it's all about personal preferences. Any way you chose to do life is fine as long as you do it with dignity and a desire not to harm others. 

From this point in time and my current perspective, I don't get why people meddle in others' lifestyles and judge, look down their noses at other's choices and seem to think they've figured it all out and their shit doesn't stink. It doesn't make sense. Life's so rich, full, complete with a rich menu so diverse and interesting. We need to eat it all to experience life fully. 

My husband and I've counseled thousands, have seen many relationship born and die and from what I observe, there are very few and far between functional relationships. No matter what the relationship style, family structure or orientation, statistically relationships fail across the board around the world. I don't think there are very many of us, rich, poor or from a particular culture, country or religion who can honestly say they've found the way and the light for creating relationships that enhance and enrich every member of the relationship or in the family structure. It seems that someone in a family or relationship always seems to struggle or suffer at the expense of others. 

Alternative relationships exist and always have existed. Trying to fit everyone in the world into one relationship mold serves no one and doesn't respect consciousness and our God-given free will as co-creators with Source. Judge not. Emphasize with and feel our global family. It's time to take a long, hard look at how humans relate and make some major changes. Somewhere there's a mixture of free-will and human rights that respects consciousness, honors diversity, women, minorities and physically challenged and encourages choice which allows each and every one of us to live out our lives in dignity, grace, beauty and peace. 

Janet Kira Lessin, Chief Focalizer of the World Polyamory Association, is a featured presenter at the annual Harbin Hot Springs Polyamory Conference (www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com), June 25-27.