More musings on free love

Posted by Lex Konrad in Opinions | Sep 25, 2004

My recent post concerning polyamory spawned quite the discussion in the comments. One commenter was skeptical of all this free love jive:

People who do the polyamory thing always seem to dilute the definition to make it work for them.

And I suppose everybody does that with every word in the English language so they can live with themselves, but it almost seems a law of physics that we pitiful humans just have so much junk to spread around and we are too insecure to give it to more than one.

If we do try, there is always something essential withheld that is only given to the One. And I do respect women who detect that and move on to people who can give it all to them. That’s the real issue.

Hey! And none of this “they will choose to stay if they want to…” Of course they will, but the discussion is more why is it that so many females don’t? Or more terrifyingly, are any humans capable of being in a sustained committed romantic realtionship with more than one? I kinda sorta doubt it.

I responded with the following:

There is no fixed “definition” of polyamory… polyamorous relationships can take on innumerable forms defined by the participants themselves. This is really the whole point: to let people pursue relationship styles that work for them as individuals. Even monogamy is a fluid concept. What most people call monogamy these days isn’t pure monogamy (i.e., lifetime pair-bonding) but serial monogamy: several loves spread over time. And issues like premarital sex and cohabitation are now negotiable.

History and biology suggest that humans are inclined to spread themselves around. Lifetime pair-bonding is a relatively recent invention, one with a spotty track record at that. I won’t go into all the dreary statistics concerning divorce and single parentage here, but it is interesting to note (re your point about women “moving on”) that, in the US at least, women initiate a substantial majority of divorces. And even for the couples who beat the odds on paper, you have to factor in affairs and unhappy marriages. The best you can say for monogamy is it works for some of the people some of the time.

We’re not overly concerned with longevity (after all, how much time has to pass for any relationship to be considered a “success”?). I think you’re misreading us there. It’s not about marking our territory either: one of our former lovers met her future husband through us. All we ever require are honesty, openness and mutual respect. If you’re seeing Joe or Jane Blow let us know, yo. And if you want to give monogamy another shot then go right ahead. Treat us well and we’ll buy you a nice wedding gift, or be there for you if things don’t work out. It’s never all-or-nothing in the non-monogamous world.

But we all know theory is bullshit. The question is, can anyone make this work? Looking at things now, I see that in spite of our occasional hiccups we’ve been able to practice what we preach. Emma, Jen, Natalia, and Layla are all connected to us in some way, with varying degrees of intensity. They all treat us with respect; they’ve all stuck around through life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Perhaps all this talk of “single” women has caused some reader confusion. We prefer to sexually interact with women as singles but we don’t expect them to actually be single, just that they approach their relationships ethically. The women I mentioned above have other people in their lives, and that’s just fine with me.

I’ll leave you with this thought, a quotation I originally posted last year:

Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus...

—James Joyce, Ulysses. Latin roughly translated to mean “love truly wishes some good to another and therefore we all desire it.”

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