Polyamory: Entering the Public Discussion

This is from the latest South Bay Poly Newsletter (#236).

Context:  I co-founded the South Bay Poly discussion group around 1993.  It meets monthly in the San Jose, CA area.  For the last year, I have also been serving on the board of the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA).  UUPA had a booth at the June national meeting ("General Assembly") of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)

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Still not much news to report from the Unitarian polys….though I can say that there appears to be deepening discussions on common ground between the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA) and the Unitarian Universalists for BDSM ("Leather & Grace").

In any case, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage has somewhat opened up public discussion on multi-partner marriage.  Usually (of course?) this is presented as a cautionary tale of the “slippery slope” we are now on, supposedly because of that Supreme Court decision.  Most people, though, I think still regard these as unrelated issues.  I tend to agree with that.  But if we’re going to discuss multi-partner marriage…

I’ve seen at least one commentary that suggested multi-partner marriage should not be dismissed out of hand.  The details of a multi-partner marriage contract could be complicated to be sure.  But then the same commentary raised the question -- perhaps more to the point for most poly families -- of whether government should be involved in sanctioning relationships at all.  Can marriage be replaced by a complex of legal agreements, specified by the people involved?

Raising these issues certainly moves the discussion of multi-partner relationships forward -- which is a good thing.

And if more people become aware of committed consensual nurturing polyrelationships, if these become more accepted as possible options…that is some sort of progress.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

“Opening Up” (From the South Bay Polys newsletter)

I was flirting or teasing once online with a friend I had known for some years, who I admired and respected very much.  We’d somehow gotten onto the subject of orgasms, and I’d asked her when I was going to hear hers.  We’d met through our poly group; she and her husband had both attended our meetings for part of a year, then drifted away.

She answered, “That’s something you’ll never hear.”  I’d suspected as much—but I’d wanted to hear her actually say it.  Part of me was disappointed, part of me was pleased she’d finally come out with it.  Her response clarified the limits on our flirtation.

So that was important for her—or maybe for her husband:  That no one else hear her come.  And yet—she had participated in other intimate activities with other people.  She engaged in BDSM with others.  I don’t know whether that involved explicit sex or not.  In any case, certain activities were restricted to her and her husband.  This hadn’t always been true; they had engaged in swinging at one time.  Then they had become interested in polyamory.

But polyamory was not to their liking somehow.  Perhaps it was jealousy; perhaps they simply didn’t want to share their intimacy; and I don’t mean simply sex; they’d shared sex with the swingers, after all.  Perhaps they just couldn’t—or didn’t care to—open up emotionally to other people.  Perhaps they felt they couldn’t be open about being open.  Who knows?  Perhaps they each felt violated somehow.

Whereas—in my case, I had come to several relevant realizations in my life.  One milestone was when it dawned on me that I liked people; I was interested in them.  And no matter how close I was to a particular person, I was still always going to find other people interesting too.

Maybe more significant was my realization that I actually was rather afraid of people.  I didn’t know why I was afraid, but I was afraid to get close to them.  But I wanted to get close to them.  I hadn’t always realized this.  I’d grown up pretty aloof and condescending towards others.  Now I admitted I found people interesting and I did want to know them better and get closer; but I never would unless I could overcome my fear and lower the shields I held up to keep them at bay; and if I dropped those shields, I might want to become much closer;

So.  But not everyone can do this; and not everyone wants to.  Other folks have other priorities and needs.  These are my needs and preferences.