"Polyamory, a Different Kind of Commitment"

The Sex Herald

For seven years an online magazine called The Sex Herald (NSFW) has billed itself as "The Adult Entertainment and News Authority." But it also has articles of wider interest to the general public.

With some misgivings, I let myself be talked into an interview for a long article on polyamory that's now up on the magazine's site. I'm relieved that it came out fine (except they screwed up the URL for this blog). Thanks to the writer for treating me and the subject decently.

Polyamory, a Different Kind of Commitment

By Laura Vladimirova

...Not to be confused with swinger’s sex parties or illegal brides in a polygamous union, it’s a commitment to intimacy and brutal honesty with several consenting partners at once. For those dedicated to the practice, the poly-lifestyle can offer sexual fulfilment, growth, love and support.

Alan, 58, publisher of the poly media watch blog www.polyamoryinthenews.com, says he’s been polyamorous since he was 17. He came to polyamory during the time of the ‘free-love’ movement. Once he experienced polyamory, though it wasn’t called that then, he was hooked. “I had been a conventional, conservative person up to then. I ended up feeling that I had a life mission to spread awareness of this wonderful and almost totally unknown possibility.”

Alan is a poly-mono switch. A lot of polys feel that it is their innate orientation is to be in open relationships, and some, like Alan, go back and forth depending on their changing [circumstances]....

Valerie, 64, another long term poly participant, knew monogamy was not for her since she was 19. “I've been poly since before we had a word for it,” she says....

Valerie and her partners, Ken and Judy, have built a life as “out” polys. They’ve been in their triad for 15 years and have two seven year old twins that they consider belong to all three of them.

“We've been remarkably fortunate,” she says of their many not always enthusiastic, but generally accepting parents and siblings. “My mother was essentially poly, too,” says Valerie, and Ken’s nephew is also “out as poly as well.”

Their status as “an intentional family of three adults” is well-known in their community. They’ve attended faculty parties as a triad, Valerie ran for city office, their various doctors are in the know, and their children’s school is well-aware of their household status....

“Of course, I live in a highly multicultural, wealthy suburb in Massachusetts,” she adds. “If I lived in backwoods Georgia things might be different.”

“A poly lifestyle is not something couples should jump into," says Sharyn Wolf, CSW, psychotherapist, relationship counselor, and author of five books, including Guerrilla Dating Tactics and This Old Spouse. “It must be carefully discussed over months.... Poly goes bad when one person in the couple is more into it and it is a purely sexual decision rather than a lifestyle choice.”...

With the first few poly relationships, there is a sense of relationship trial and error. Figuring out the best couple dynamics, sexual or otherwise, can be challenging....

Read the whole article (ads are NSFW). It's undated but appears to have gone up on April 30, 2010.

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