Polyamory solves more problems than it causes. And all the problems it causes aren’t really unique to poly.

All the reasons people might think monogamy is better (and not just for them, but for everyone), turn out not to be true, or lack evidence. And like Christian apologetics, monogamy apologetics will leave out data regarding the benefits of alternatives, in order to oversell the benefit of compliance with antiquated norms. Monogamy, after all, was invented for men to control women as property, and like a kluge, it has since been clunkily tinkered with to align more with our modern egalitarian values. But the two don’t really fit. You can’t value freedom, consent, diversity, equality, and autonomy, and insist monogamy remain the norm. Monogamy is an option. And for many, not the best.

Even when people are not specifically trying to defend monogamy as “better,” monogamy assumptions blind even well-meaning intersectional feminist efforts to make the world better. As in one example in particular: a recent debate over whether poor women need to “get married” for their own good. Which even some secular (?) feminists have argued. For good but still flawed reasons. Good, because they are calling attention to the class privilege of feminists who advocate for women’s liberation from the necessity of marriage. But flawed, because they assume selling sex for childcare resources (aka “getting married for the good of the children”) is the only option poor women have. And in this case, polyamory isn’t even the only other option being overlooked. But it, too, is being overlooked.

Today I’m going to talk about all of that.

Dinner with the Polycule

Last month I attended my first polycule dinner.

As the boyfriend of one of the women in it, I was invited to attend a gathering for food, drinks, conversation, and celebration of a married couple and all their lovers (“paramours”), and some of their lovers’ lovers (“metamours”). One of their metamours and her girlfriend couldn’t attend due to a scheduling conflict. But if they had all made it, there would have been fifteen of us. As it was, there were thirteen.

This wasn’t something they do regularly, but from time to time. Although they are all continually involved with each other’s lives in different ways, so this couple’s paramours and metamours in various combinations often visit or hang out together. Most are also connected to other polycules as well.

In the anchor couple in this case, the husband had his two girlfriends plus his wife there; the wife had her four boyfriends, of whom I was one, plus (of course) her husband there; one of the husband’s girlfriends brought her boyfriend (her husband was away on business), and his other girlfriend brought her wife, who in turn came with her boyfriend; one of the wife’s boyfriends brought another of his girlfriends; and the thirteenth seat was taken by one of the wife’s friends who isn’t herself poly.

An excellent time was had by all.

A few days earlier I had attended a panel discussion at a college in which eight or so polyamorous folk of many races, genders, and economic classes fielded questions from students about their poly lives. Almost all of them had children in their polycules. The subject of family and parenting came up a lot. In my polycule that would gather a few days later, most members don’t have children, but some do. And from their experience, and the experience of everyone on the panel, parenting within a polyamory lifestyle works out quite well for everyone, including the kids. [See “Children in Polyamorous Families” Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.]

There are many resources for learning about the real lived experience of polyamorous parents. Here are some of the best examples online:

• I Grew Up in a Polyamorous Household
• Queer Brown Girl Trying to Be a Parent
• Polyamory Hurts Kids? Not in the Real World
• More on Raising Children in a Poly Home
• Polyamory Weekly Entries on Parenting

This is what the future looks like.

By the end of this century I predict some couples will always remain monogamous. But most will have become polyamorous in some fashion. Even most of those who go all the way to relationship anarchy will be connected to polycules whose members in various combinations will on occasion meet and share joys and resources among each other. Likewise any, like me (and many of my girlfriends), who practice solo poly.

One benefit of this will be that few people will be dependent on a monogamous marriage to afford kids (in money, time, property access, or emotional labor), and few will be wholly alone in raising their kids. And that’s even just considering networks of romantic relationships. I suspect the diversity and negotiability of those relationships, will rub off on all relationship structures, and people who are even just friends will more commonly communalize their needs and resources. The extended family may also return as a respected model for those who do not have oppressive or intolerable families. Autonomy will increasingly be a paramount value, but so will reciprocity, and a feeling of shared lives and accomplishments. Parenting collectives will thus more likely be a thing even apart from polyamory and multi-generation households.

Those of us in the polyamory community already see this happening. It has grown considerably in just the last ten years. Imagine what the world will look like in fifty.

Feminists sometimes do not think of this.

Do Poor Women Need to “Get Married”?

In an article for The Atlantic by Emma Green called “Wealthy Women Can Afford to Reject Marriage, but Poor Women Can’t,” the point is made that privileged feminists often don’t think about how the options they promote for women might not be available when those women are in poverty. And there is a growing poverty class in America today due to rising income inequality (historically one of the signs of a nation in decline). She’s right. Feminists of means do need to take into account what’s needed for women who lack means to gain their equality and autonomy. But Green is still wrong in her proposed “fix.” [Note that it’s since been brought to my attention that Green may be less a genuine feminist and more a religionist concern troll.]

The article’s description summarizes her argument, “Higher-income ‘single ladies’ [sic] often push back against ‘patriarchy’ [sic]. But the statistics don’t lie: Low-income, unmarried women face significant economic challenges when they stay single.” When you read the article, you find that all her evidence for that conclusion stems solely from child rearing. So in fact, it is not the case that poor women need marriage; her case is really that children need marriage. These poor women with children are just coerced by the fact of having children into getting married ‘for the good of the children’. It does not in fact help the women themselves all that much. Any more than it does the men. Who aren’t getting married because they don’t need to. Neither do the women…unless they’re stuck with children.

Even the presumption that two incomes are needed merely to support two adults, because wages are so low that the poor are forced to resort to economies of scale, is brought down by the simple fact of a thing we have in society now called a roommate. And a thing we have had in society for thousands of years now called an extended family.

If a single low-income man wants to get by and can’t afford rent in his area, he shares that rent with roommates, or he lives with his parents or other family members. Women can do the same, and do. Society does denigrate adults who live at home, but that used to be normal, and it makes no sense to suddenly start belittling it now. Even less not to recommend it. Green, oddly, never complains that siblings and uncles and aunts and grandparents ought to be helping out more with their kin’s child rearing. Nope. The only option she can imagine for a single woman, mysteriously, is to marry a man.

And yet, of course, recommending that kin get more involved is no more optimal a solution than marriage, since having to depend on family deprives you of autonomy. As would recommending that churches, for example, step up and help single mothers with charity—that always comes with oppressive strings attached, even more so than depending on family. Although marriage also deprives you of autonomy, it perhaps does less so, as with marriage you have some power of choice in who you pick. At least in theory…for the poor, not really so often in practice. But when you are destitute, you need to work all the options available to you. Extended family arrangements are one of them. And financially, in terms of economies of scale, they are as good or even better than marriage.

But even apart from the odd assumption that all single mothers are somehow orphans with no family, even orphans need not take Green’s advice. Because in the age of the roommate, marriage has only minimal financial function…unless you have kids. So it’s really just about children, not women per se. As Green says:

For poor, uneducated women, especially those who have kids, the question of whether to get married looks a lot different: It’s the choice between raising children on one or two incomes, between having someone to help with household chores and child-rearing alone while working multiple jobs.

Notice these are only things you need help with when you have kids. Sharing of chores is handy for a childless couple. But you can share chores with family or friends or neighbors or roommates. And we could recommend they do this as easily as we can recommend getting married. Until you have kids. The cost of helping then becomes enormous. And how are you going to pay those helping you for that labor? Green, essentially, recommends you pay them with sex. In legal fashion, of course. But still. That’s all marriage then becomes.

Of course, wages should not be so low. That’s the real scandal and the real crime, and we should not stop talking about that in place of patronizing the poor with our recommended ways to make do in the face of what really ails them: not being paid a fair wage for their labor (or, as the case may be, their being left out to dry by a society that won’t help the disabled). But insofar as you admit that, but still want the best outcomes in the meantime, telling women to get married makes no more sense than telling men to get married. Unless what you are really concerned about is not women, but children. And even then, you are basically saying sexual contracts are better for kids. Even if you don’t realize that’s what you are saying—as I’m sure Green doesn’t.

Green admits that she does not intend to argue that “all low-income women should marry, that it’s their fault if they’re not married, or that marriage is the silver-bullet solution to solving income inequality.” But it is peculiar that all Green can think of as advice for women facing these difficulties is “get married.” And though she does ask, “Why don’t we teach boys that they need to get married, the way we teach this to girls?”, the answer is, ‘Because boys don’t need to get married’. If you told them they could benefit from a woman’s income through a marriage contract (already a rather Machiavellian thing to suggest), they’d tell you they have plenty of other options. And that’s just as true for women. Unless, again, they have kids.

Also, though Green does not exclude the reality of gays and lesbians among the poor, she does speak as though women need to marry men. Men marrying men, and women marrying women, is also an option now (though in most places it wasn’t when Green wrote in 2014). But more importantly, there are and have always been many more options than marriage of any sort. Plenty of women cohabit and share expenses with a lover (whether a man or a woman) without a marriage contract. But that’s not what I mean (though that is an option, which preserves more of a woman’s autonomy, but at greater risk of unexpected outcomes).

What I mean is more outside the box than that…

• Two single mothers could agree to cohabit and share income and child rearing duties. They could even do so under contract (if only our society would make simple contracts and incorporation more accessible to the poor). They needn’t be sexual partners.
• Three or more single mothers could do the same.
• Even women and men with common interests but not romantic ones could do the same. Even when straight. (Although I know of households in which a single mother shares a home, income, and childcare with a gay male friend.)

We, as a society, could encourage such arrangements by recommending them, respecting them, and legally recognizing them. We, as a society, could empower such options further by simplifying the accessibility (in cost and process) of necessary legal instruments (e.g. contracts or charters of incorporation) that grant them all the needed powers, rights, and privileges. We, as a society, do not need to privilege marriage, which is actually a de facto sexual contract, over other options. But in the absence of such enlightened changes to our civil society, friendly agreements still exist and can be managed. People are already doing these things. They could be doing them more. (And they could be doing them with more support from society and the law.) Green doesn’t notice. Nor thinks of it herself. She can only imagine marriage. And in terms that sound little more like prostitution.

In fact marriage is simply not the only option for poor women. Certainly not when childless. But even when burdened with children. But these options—from extended family arrangements to cohabiting friendships and nonsexual partnerships—are invisible to Green. Because she is so immersed in monogamy culture that her mind can only see, and thus hyper-privileges, sexual monogamy as a patchwork solution to the problem of criminally low wages and a callous system devoid of social support for children or the disabled.

Green’s immersal in monogamy privilege, and her presumptions of monogamy being the only escape, becomes condescending to the poor, by assuming they can’t innovate other solutions (such as cooperatives without sexual contracts), and that they can’t be polyamorous. I think the non-poly solutions ought to be discussed and promoted a great deal more. But today I’m discussing the poly solution, as just one among many. Because I’m imagining what a polyamorous world would look like. And what polyamorous families would look like in it.

I know of several poor poly women and men who share resources to raise children. Whether those resources are money, property, time, or other things (like emotional labor).

Marriage is not required.

And even insofar as marriages are secured within polycules today for their legal empowerments, society could be providing much easier access to those rights and privileges without requiring a whole-shebang marriage contract. The concept is obsolete anyway. Hence the state has been trying to “privilege” marriage by stacking heaps of legal advantages onto it. But we could have rethought that, and still can. Those advantages could be distributed by different instruments than marriage. Legal and tax advantages to parents should be awarded simply to parents, and through parenting contracts. As for example. Likewise hospital “visiting rights” should be something we can award to anyone we want. And so on.

This is what feminists could be talking about. Not “privileged self-sufficiency” or “survival marriages.”

Green, or anyone who agrees with her, might object that monogamous marriage is just better. Polyamory and nonsexual partnerships and collectives surely must suck somehow. Right? For nonsexual partnerships and collectives, it’s hard to see how. They can’t be any worse than marriage. And by giving you access to a larger pool of prospects (you don’t need to limit your options to people who are “sexually attracted to you,” for example), obviously of greater utility, especially to the poor.

So what about polyamory?

Monogamy vs. Polyamory: Epic Rap Battle?

Polyamorists joke about “poly problems,” like managing calendars, and overcoming our enculturated fears of fully open communication. But what people usually think polyamory problems are, are things like getting diseases, being miserably jealous all the time, and sad children. The reality is quite different.

Terri Conley et al. published a study called “A Critical Examination of Popular Assumptions about the Benefits and Outcomes of Monogamous Relationships” in Personality and Social Psychology Review in 2013. They asked people what they thought the benefits of monogamy were, and came up with essentially three common answers: “monogamy is perceived to improve sexuality (e.g., by increasing the frequency, quality, and desirability of sex), prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), increase relationship quality (e.g., by reducing jealousy and increasing trust and satisfaction), and provide benefits to the family (especially with regard to child-rearing).” It turns out, no evidence supports any of these beliefs.

Atheists should take note of that. Because you know quite well what to think of a belief that 95% of a population has, but for which there is no evidence to be found. That’s a belief not based on reality, but mythology. And you might want to ask why this mythology still exists. And why you should still buy into it yourself.

How Are You Not All Filthy with Diseases?

Guess what? Research shows you are just as likely to catch an STI when “monogamous” than when ethically non-monogamous. In fact, if you are “monogamous,” you are actually substantially more likely to catch an STI if your partner is cheating. Because ethically non-monogamous people are extremely conscientious about safe sex practices, testing, and communication. Monogamous couples are not. In reality, if you are in a monogamous relationship, odds are good you are actually just “monogamous.” Because it’s all too common for one of you to in fact be unethically non-monogamous.

The lifetime incidence of cheating in monogamy is currently at least 25% within marriage, and over 40% outside marriage, and has been increasing for decades. And that’s per partner. So the probability of your being or being exposed to a cheating “monogamous” partner is close to 40% even when married. Over 60% otherwise. And that’s even adjusting for gender differences in infidelity rate, a gap that has been steadily closing, demonstrating it was cultural and not biological all along. Cheating is so common, it is no longer plausible to claim monogamy is normal. And that means, so much for monogamy protecting you from diseases. And the science confirms this: STI rates are no different whether you are “monogamous,” or ethically not. And that’s despite us having many partners, who are in turn connected to many partners, who are in turn connected to many partners…and so on.

This means that saying we need monogamy to protect you from STIs is exactly like saying we need abstinence-only education to protect you from STIs. They are equally effective. Which is to say, not effective at all.

The same results were found for all measures of sexual satisfaction. When you run out all the averages, monogamy simply does not get you more or better sex, either.

Of course, we also over-stigmatize STIs. Just as we used to over-stigmatize unwed mothers. In reality, getting an STI is no worse than getting food poisoning from eating takeout or a friend-cooked meal, or a staff infection from using a public restroom or visiting a hospital. Our reaction should be the same.

And also, of course, most monogamous people admit that having more varied sex with more varied partners is kind of actually better—to the point that we have to create and maintain cultural and social mechanisms to police people against pursuing these obvious enjoyments.

How Are You Not Miserably Jealous All the Time?

The research so far shows no advantage to monogamy in avoiding the frequency of feeling jealousy or avoiding its negative effects in a relationship. In fact, polyamory performs better: most people will experience jealousy less often, and less noxiously, and its effects will be less damaging (which contrasts with my survey of the plague of pseudoscience on gender in EvoPsych). This is because polyamory forces you to continually confront the reasons for your jealousy, and to communicate and work through those reasons, which ends up reducing how often you get jealous, and how jealous you get, and substantially reducing its effect on the relationship.

In other words, you get over it. And often become a better person for it—more understanding, more caring, more self-confident, more communicative, more honest…and less anxious or resentful. You can even end up with stronger relationships. As you and your partners know each other’s real thoughts and feelings more deeply and thoroughly than monogamy allows, you respect each other’s autonomy as individuals more, and you can love them for who they really are and what they really think and feel, instead of loving a Disney Movie fantasy of them.

You actually learn to like your partner’s freedom, and the joys it brings them. And they help you achieve the same.

Monogamy, meanwhile, has nearly the opposite effect. It teaches you to punish honesty in a relationship whenever the truth sounds at all threatening or scary—like “I’m falling in love with her” or “I am incredibly sexually attracted to him, and masturbate to fantasies of being with him,” or even just “I think they’re hot” or “I wish I could be with them too.” You thus train each other to box away parts of your hearts and minds so the other will never know the real you. It’s hard to really love someone, when you arrange it this way so that you can never even really know them, or resent them when you do. It’s also more than a little destructive to express your love for someone by actively thwarting pieces of their happiness, whether little or big. “You can’t have that because I love you,” is not exactly a coherent way of living.

Many monogamists thus feel jealousy more often or intensely than most polyamorists, because they develop no skills to get past it or resolve it, because they never really confront it, and never really talk about it. Some damage to or misery in the relationship resulting from the incurred suspicions, fears, and resentments is inevitable. Or else it hardly ever troubles you. Just like in poly.

Indeed, I often hear the same mantra from monogamists upon learning of polyamory, “I could never do that.” Because they’d be too jealous or worried or any number of other things they assume. But you know what? I hear exactly the same thing from atheists who are ex-Christians: “When I was a bible-thumping believer, I was convinced I could never not believe in God,” because surely that would be miserable, with no meaning, no afterlife to look forward to, no warm fuzzy feeling of God in their heart. “I could never do that,” they said, shaking their heads at the impossibility of these atheists, who must be cognitively defective, soulless freaks.

Many polyamorists say the same of how they felt before evolving into it. The analogy is about 90% apt. Just as what atheists thought when they were Christians was impossible, so what you think is impossible about your capacity to be ethically non-monogamous is likely based on simply not knowing what the end of the process looks like—how your future self will end up accepting the absence of God-feels and your own and everyone else’s mortality, and still find meaning and joy and hope and values and purpose anyway. Now they shake their heads and wonder why they ever thought they couldn’t be an atheist, why they thought it would be so awful, when in fact, it turns out, it’s actually a lot better. They have become a better person—being forced to deal with questions of death and loss and realistic reasons to be moral and why things and people really are the way they are and feel the things they feel, all leads them to better and more correct understandings of themselves and the world and of what really is right or wrong. They abandoned their fears and dependencies and insecurities. Atheism wasn’t so scary. “I could never do that,” simply wasn’t true.

Moving to polyamory can do the same thing to you. Maybe you can’t imagine it now. Just as Christians can’t imagine themselves being atheists and still being happy and decent people. But just as abandoning Christianity is a process of overcoming fears and dependencies and insecurities, as well as a battery of false beliefs, so is abandoning monogamy. Reasons to remain monogamous anyway exist for some, but they are fewer and different reasons than you may expect. “I don’t have time” is a much better reason…if it’s actually true, and you aren’t interested in romantic relationships enough to readjust your life priorities. “I would always be jealous,” however, might not be such a good reason to avoid finding out if that’s true. Any more than “if I stopped believing in God I’d become an immoral reprobate in constant despair at the meaninglessness of life” is not a good reason to avoid testing the waters of non-belief.

One thing that’s actually scary is that, because monogamy culture forced you and your partner to grab any one chair you could in the game of musical chairs and hang on to it as your only chance at happiness, and thus forced you to rationalize your decision as surely the best, the odds may not be low that you shouldn’t be together. Many marriages shouldn’t be. That’s sad but I think true. So you do face the scary prospect of blowing up an existing relationship in order to move beyond monogamy. Just as a Christian faces the scary prospect of abandoning a comfortable and reassuring worldview for a stormy sea of the unknown, with nothing obvious to replace it. They have to decide between the comfort of clinging to an unsatisfying rock, and swimming blind through a sea of chaos to the next rock they can cling to, a worldview that can make them feel grounded and secure, not knowing before they start that it will actually be better for them. Or that it’s even there.

I don’t envy the decision. Odds are, like most Christians, you are just doomed to the safety of the mediocre rock. And it’s only the next generation, who never clings to that rock in the first place, that will have an enviable chance of finding a better one first. We might be doomed, but we should help those coming after us not to get stuck where we are. We should empower the next generation to choose ethical non-monogamy if they want, and to decide with good information, not mythology and guesswork and prejudice.

Just as we shouldn’t be teaching them “abstinence-only sex education,” we shouldn’t be teaching them “monogamy is always the better option for you” (much less “the only option for you”). We should give them the honest information they need to decide that for themselves. And respect their choice. And help them know we will respect their choice. Because causing them to fear our disapprobation is a form of coercion, which is only a positive good when directed at an actual evil. Polyamory isn’t one. Such coercion in its case is therefore unjust. Exactly as in Christianity, when Christians create a subtle environment of social pressure, in which the fear of choosing not to be a Christian coerces them to remain one. Don’t replicate that.

So how do you get past jealousy in any relationship, monogamous or otherwise? As I learned from some members of that polycule I’m connected to:

Really, it’s about needs and fears. What are you afraid of? And what do you need? You should always have a good handle on that anyway. It’s key to living a good life and making good decisions. Because then you can confront your fears and examine your needs—and ask: Why are you afraid of that? And why do you think you need that? Because you might find your fears are unfounded or excessive, or solvable with hedges, safeties, and assurances; or you actually don’t need those things, but some other things instead.

In any event, some do try polyamory and they can’t do it. But in my experience, most do polyamory just as well as monogamy, and many do even better. It’s not free of all the usual relationship problems you can have in monogamy or even nonsexual friendships and work relationships. But once you get through the learning curve, of unlearning all the crap your culture sold you to control you, you won’t be any more plagued or troubled by jealousy than you were in monogamy, and quite likely far less so—as many have discovered, and many more continue to discover.

How Aren’t Your Kids Hopelessly Damaged?

So monogamy doesn’t protect you from STIs or the travails of jealousy. But surely it traumatizes children! And won’t someone think of the children!

There is actually no evidence any harm results. And in practical fact, the benefits are obvious. If two people are an asset in dividing expenses and labor, three people are even more so. Likewise four. Five. Six.

The negatives meanwhile appear to be mythical. Conley et al. found out, while parents expressed concern that maybe polyamory could lead children to more sense of loss or instability, that isn’t what children actually experience:

Many of the children [studied] reported that their parents’ former partners stayed involved in their lives even after the sexual or romantic phase of the partners’ relationships to the parents ended. The children did report experiencing some pain at losing the friendship of adults who were not involved in their lives any longer, but they felt this pain for both former romantic partners and also for platonic friends of parents whom they no longer saw for a variety of reasons. Overall, the children were satisfied with their family arrangement, acknowledging that they may not choose it themselves but that it works well for their parents.

Think also of the effects of moving for work, or changing schools, and all sorts of life decisions that affect children by making their life less stable, forcing them to deal with the loss of even their own friends and having to find new ones, and so on. This happened to a lot of us. In actual fact, we do just fine. We even learned from it all. And with good parenting, we adjusted readily. And polyamory isn’t even as stark as that in its analogs.

As Jessica Burde puts it:

Poly parents who have taken part in research studies have shared these concerns, and taken steps to reduce the impact on their kids. Common steps include:

• Only introducing poly partners if/when the relationship is stable and can be expected to last a long time (and sometimes not even then.)
• Encouraging kids to see poly partners as members of the parent’s general social circle of friends, and as such, not expected to necessarily be a permanent part of the kids lives.
• Making an effort to give kids time with former poly partners, so that relationships between kid and ex can continue even though the relationships between the adults have ended. (You know, just like mono parents do when a relationship ends.)

The kids of poly parents who have taken part in studies haven’t shared their parents concerns, and have rarely expressed any sense of abandonment or trauma from their parent’s partners moving in and out of their lives.

So goes every other pearl-clutching worry.

Polyamory just doesn’t have any evident downside for parenting. But it has ample upsides.

The Poly Solution

A metamour of mine once commented on how so many films and shows are based on love triangles. He can only shake his head and point out, “You know, there’s a solution for that.” In Elementary, Sherlock Holmes is tasked by computer hackers with writing an essay defending which choice Bella should make, Jacob or Edward. He aptly remarks that it’s obvious she should choose both and develop a polyamorous triad with them, but alas, he has to write under the constraints set by the hackers. Just like the constraints all too often set on us all by society.

Polyamory can solve a number of problems created by monogamy. Suspicion, jealousy, dependency, loss of self, having to keep many of your thoughts secret, getting tired of each other, getting on each other’s nerves, boredom, falling into a rut, and other forms of relationship burnout (assuming it isn’t the case that maybe you shouldn’t be together in the first place), as well as narrowness of experience, unfulfilled desires or longings, loss of autonomy, and not being able to devote all your time to each other because of other commitments in life.

With polyamory, if you do it right, you can get to:

• Divide emotional labor and relieve building tensions.
• Divide physical labor and multiply access to resources.
• Experience more lives intimately.
• Enjoy more sexual pleasure and experience.
• Enjoy more emotional pleasure and experience.
• Gain better communication skills and more self-knowledge.
• Gain more intimate knowledge about your lovers’ actual thoughts & feelings.
• Get stuck in fewer ruts and routines in your relationships.
• Not have to depend on only one relationship.
• Become more self-confident and independent.

That’s not even a complete list. I may elaborate on it in future. Not all arrangements bring you all these benefits. Not everyone needs or wants them all. But all these advantages are as available to the poor as to those of means.

Conclusion

But this isn’t an article about how to do poly, or what the poly options are, or what their values and norms should be, or how to transition to a poly lifestyle. I’ve written a little on that before. But there is a growing body of articles online about all of those things, from highly experienced polyamorists (some even from credentialed doctors, psychologists, sociologists, and experts in human sexuality). You can explore that world. There are also debates within the poly community on everything as well. So you should be aware of those and not assume every polyamorist is necessarily right (including me). Some things are better practices than others for different people. And some things are probably just bad ideas all around; while some are universally good.

Honesty, respect, and communication I find to be the core fundamentals, without which no ethical non-monogamy is possible. And IMO, if you truly practice those three, you can build an entire ethical non-monogamy for yourself and your partners. But there is a vast body of experience to benefit from as well. People have learned from mistakes, and that knowledge can help you. And all of this is increasingly available online to read and integrate. For those who want a starting point in a more solid manual, most commonly recommended within the polyamory community are Opening Up, The Ethical Slut, and More Than Two. They each have their own upsides and downsides. But together, I think they cover all the bases of polyamory 101.

-:-

See now also Romantic Norms Are in Flux. No Wonder Everyone’s Obsessed with Polyamory and Polyamory and Consensual Non-monogamy in the US and Polyamory Is On The Rise And Society Should Be More Accommodating, Research Argues.