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Time Enough for Love

This one, from SciAm, is the polar opposite of the last bit I did on the anthropology of human relationships, just a couple of days ago. That one talked about single people. This one...

     The truth about polyamory  
An anthropologist’s detailed research shows polyamorists focus on intimacy and honesty, not sleeping around

Intimacy? Honesty? A Jedi craves not these things.

Kelly and Tim practice polyamory: they form deep, meaningful, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

You know what grinds my ass? In most cases, what consenting and/or eager adults do with each other is absolutely no one else's business. And yet other people feel the need to make it their business.

In popular media, though, it is usually ridiculed and dismissed.

Part of that is ignorance, but it may also be propaganda.

Critics deride polyamorists as decadent liberal hedonists looking for ethical cover for their desire to sleep with lots of people.

As a decadent liberal hedonist, I resent that characterization. I don't sleep with anyone.

An Atlantic article says polyamory is emblematic of the “banal pleasure-seeking of wealthy, elite culture in the 2020s,” allowing people to justify indiscriminate sex and avoid the hard work of commitment.

I avoid hard work, period. Trying to find someone to have sex with is itself hard work.

“No one can truly feel safe inside a marriage whose vows have an asterisk,” claim the authors of a piece distributed by the Institute for Family Studies.

No one? Bullshit. But that tracks with my rule: Any group or organization with the word "Family" in it spouts bullshit.

I am an anthropologist and licensed therapist, and I have spent the past seven years researching polyamory the way anthropologists do: by spending a lot of time with a lot of people who engage in it.

This is where, normally, I'd quip something like "Oh, I'll just bet you have." But that would undermine the point I'm trying to make, so I'll just pretend I didn't even think of the joke.

Politically, polyamory is a rare place where the left and right meet: you might encounter a libertarian or a Donald Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders bro. The philosophy and practice of polyamory resonate with people across political divides and are not simply liberal indulgences—in fact, they tie into a libertarian and conservative ethos with deep roots in U.S. society, where people rebel against the powers that be telling them what to do.

That's an interesting observation, certainly. From what I'd gathered so far in the article, any moral panic about polyamory comes mainly from the conservative side.

Where popular portrayals of polyamory most miss the mark, though, is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, say the people involved in it, and it has ethics at its core.

I'm not exactly arguing the point, but I'd expect there to be a bit more variation, because, surprise, people are different. Just like not all singles are alike, and not all couples are alike.

Respect, consent, trust, communication, flexibility and honesty are fundamental to these unconventional dynamics, according to a large review by researchers at Virginia Tech published in 2023.

Fake those qualities, and you're golden.

Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that polyamorists engage in safer sexual practices than the people who say they are monogamous—a quarter of whom reported having sexual relationships unknown to their partner—and this caution may reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections.

You remember up there when I said, "In most cases, what consenting and/or eager adults do with each other is absolutely no one else's business?" I admit to being judgmental about people who "cheat." If you're going to cheat on your partner, what else are you going to be dishonest about? But for me, that's not about the sex bit. As I said, that's none of my fucking business (goddamned right that pun was intended). It's about the ethics bit.

Also, I find it difficult to believe that only "a quarter" of self-described monogamists wandered off on their nominal partner. In my experience, it should be more like 90%. Like I said: dishonesty.

In short, polyamory is radically different from what many people may envision. Its current flourishing is not just a curiosity or random event: it indexes something important about this cultural moment and how people experience and value intimacy and relationships.

My own attitude toward it was shaped by reading science fiction.

No, really.

It's not something I've ever been interested in as a lifestyle. Single, or paired up: that's me. Maybe the occasional bit of group fun when I was much younger, though there were no commitments involved there. But what science fiction made me realize is that I can accept that other people want different things, and, I must reiterate, it's none of my business. Two of my best friends are in poly relationships, both of which have lasted way longer than my supposedly monogamous relationships have, so, great, works for them. I have another friend who is completely asexual. That works for her. And I'm in a purely platonic living situation, which I know a lot of people can't comprehend, either.

I am not an apologist for polyamory. I have been in such relationships in the past and had positive experiences, but I ultimately decided polyamory wasn’t for me. It activated some insecurities that I have spent years of my life working to heal, and I never felt that polyamory resonated deeply with my sense of who I am. For me, participating in polyamory successfully would take continual, deep work around old and familiar emotional wounds, and I simply wasn’t all in.

So, a lot like my own attitude, which probably has a bit of fear of abandonment thrown into the mix. But it seems to me that the author is being an apologist for polyamory—not for herself, perhaps, but as a general idea.

Polyamory holds that what’s wrong is the very premise of monogamy in the first place. One person cannot possibly meet all our needs. “It’s like this,” Kris, a 37-year-old real estate agent, says. “We have groups of friends, right? Maybe one you go out dancing with on the weekends, another one is the person you call when you’ve had a horrible day; maybe someone else is a sports fan, so you go to ball games together. Totally normal, right? We don’t expect one friend to be our only friend, because we have different kinds of relationships with different people. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.”

I can relate to that. Only for me, it doesn't mean I need to have intimate relationships to fulfill those "needs." But I do insist on being able to have friends outside a committed relationship.

Love, polyamory practitioners say, is similar. Like friendship, it is not a limited resource—it is additive. More love begets more love. “When you have multiple kids, you don’t love one of them less just because another one is born,” John, a 36-year-old business analyst, explains. “There’s enough love for all of them. You love them each for who they are uniquely.”

Which brings me back to science fiction.

No, really.

There's a quote from Robert A. Heinlein that I memorized at an early age:

The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

Now, I'm fully aware that Heinlein had some, shall we say, regressive attitudes about sex and gender. But that quote always resonated with me, and this article reminded me of it. (Time Enough for Love, 1973)

There's a lot more at the article. Even though it is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, none of our business, I think it does help to learn more about these things.

None of this is about telling other people how to live. Quite the contrary. It's about accepting peoples' differences. Do poly relationships sometimes not work out? As the article notes, absolutely, yes. But so does every other kind of relationship. Including no relationship at all. Nominally monogamous couples divorce. Friends drift apart. People have falling-outs. That's life. Life is also, in my view, knowing that different people have different desires for intimacy and sex, and knowing when something's none of our business.

The sooner people realize this, I think, the better off we'll be as a species.