I've ignored this until now, but polyamory has been all over the discourse lately. Why? Is there any evidence that polyamory has increased?
I took a look around to find out. Scott Hocker pointed me to Bedbible.com, a site that publishes "product reviews of sex toys and personal lubricants that have been personally tested"—as well as some obviously bogus charts that we can ignore aside from their amusement value. Shadi Hamid points me to Google Trends, which shows no increase in interest at all except on Valentine's Day this year:
Dr. Russell Moul suggests it's because of a recent book, Why It's OK to Not Be Monogamous, by Justin Clardy, a professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University. But Clardy has been droning on about polyamory for years, with books and papers such as Love Hates Us; Polyamory in Black; Marriage and Black Polyamorous Non-being; and Monogamies, Non-Monogamies, and the Moral Impermissibility of Intimacy Confining Constraints. The book "situates ethical non-monogamy within the Black feminist tradition of progressive Black sexual politics [and] analyzes how marriage and monogamy are partially responsible for discrimination and social marginalization that African American polyamorists encounter across a range of social institutions in a post-civil rights era America."
Tyler Austin Harper points to another book: "At the center of the recent discussions is More: A Memoir of an Open Marriage, by Molly Roden Winter, an unsparing account of a polyamorous life." But that's all it is.
Jennifer Wilson at the New Yorker points me to yet another book, American Poly: A History, by Christopher Gleason, a lecturer at Georgia State University. The Amazon summary says "there has clearly been a growing interest" in polyamory—though it mentions no supporting evidence—and notes, "In the 1950s and 1960s it surprisingly emerged among libertarian science fiction writers." I think this is code for Robert Heinlein, but maybe there's more to it. In any case, this is a history of polyamory, and includes no evidence of growing popularity aside from the fact that people are chattering about it.
An article in Psychology Today from a couple of years ago says the US is now in its third wave of polyamory and "its current wave is the most socially significant and widespread by far." Young people, it says, use it as an adaptive strategy to deal with longer lifespans, the internet, climate change, poor job prospects, blah blah blah.
Anything else? The dating site Tinder, well known for its dedication to scholarly rigor, reports that 41% of Gen Z are "open" to non-monogamous relationships.
Are you bored yet? I am. As near as I can tell, there is precisely zero evidence of a rise in polyamory among the young or anyone else. It's getting talked about just because it's getting talked about. A self-licking ice cream cone, so to speak. Let me know if anyone has any actual evidence to the contrary.
And even if there were a notable increase, say to 100% of the population...who the f*** cares?
It would be nice if it weren't criminalized in some places. We accept serial polyamory, why shouldn't we be open to overlap?
Also, I don't think it would be written about so much even if it becomes more acceptable - it's a thing you do, not a thing you talk about.
Criminalized?
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It’s all just bullshit.
Couple of things.
1) Just going to ignore that there was no spike in February of other years? I'm not going to pretend that
1a) You only went back 3 years. For social attitudes on something, aren't you one of the first people to say you need to go back farther than that? Like decades?
2) Tinder does, indeed, ask its users what type of relationships they are open to. Why? Because there is growing acceptance for non-traditional relationships. But you just went ahead and assumed that Tinder was making it up. There's no reason to believe they're making it up *when it's a question that you can fill out and filter by*.
The bias towards traditional relationships on display here would be shocking if it weren't so banal and widespread.
To add, polyamory and non-monogamy are not the same thing. It's like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
Google Trends shows the same thing going back to 2004.
A Tinder question is not remotely a good source for anything, and anyway, it doesn't show a trend.
There's no bias here. I don't care what kind of relationship anyone has. But there's no evidence for any change in either attitudes or practice.
Why are you counting Google Trends as a good source of info but not Tinder profiles? Especially when the topic is relationships?
Are Tinder users an appropriate sample space vs a much larger sample of people from all segments of the online population?
I don't think so.
i'm sure more people use google search, but when you're talking specifically about relationship status, i'm not sure why the responses of ~75 million active monthly active users of tinder answering that specific question are thrown out so quickly.
also..i'm monogamous, but i've literally never done a google search for "monogamy."
People who use dating sites like Tinder often date multiple people at once. It's part of the whole paradigm of online dating. So they're non-monogamous. Others aren't comfortable dating someone who is still dating others. That's what makes the question a useful one.
As others here have explained, polyamory is a long-term goal of maintaining multiple romantic relationships in a relatively stable configuration. There may be some people on Tinder who are looking to form such a situation, but that's not what the question is driving at.
That's not what they're saying though when they select "open to non-monogamy" - you have conflated it with exclusivity in the early stages of dating someone.
Being open to non-monogamy means having a(n ethically) non-monogamous relationship, not that someone is just dating around right now.
And to reiterate for the umpteenth time, polyamory and ENM are not the same thing.
I can tell you first hand that there has been a change in attitudes and practices around dating. People are more willing to discuss and consider non-traditional relationships, which includes polyamory and other types of partnerships, such as non-monogamy. In really simple terms, open relationships. Relationships can be polyamorous and open, or polyamorous and closed.
Those in traditional relationships or with traditional views on relationships tend to overlook this, and it shows up in ways like conflating polyamory with non-monogamy. Which you have done in this post.
And to echo, why would reporting from Tinder on the % of user profiles (within the Gen Z age range) who list themselves as open to non-monogamy not be valid evidence of anything?
Where would you propose we get such data from?
And to reiterate: being open to non-monogamy is not the same thing as desiring or even simply being open to polyamory.
Lastly, to put it kindly, someone who has been married for decades and doesn't personally conduct relationship research really doesn't have any authority to speak on dating in the present day.
When I look at Google Trends on this since 2004, I see a gradual but steady rise from 15-25% back then to 35-45% now. That seems like more than nothing.
Are these Tinder users actual people or bots? Are they representative? Are they being honest? It's not nothing -- it's data -- but Tinder's focus is on making money, so I don't think I'd rely on it, at least without knowing more. And, if 41% of Gen Z are open to polyamory, it should show up in other statistics. (And maybe it is!)
I fail to see how Tinder reporting on something like the % of profiles within a certain age range who check the box for "open to non-monogamy" could be purported to be related to a profit motive.
How many are bots? I don't know, but is there reason to think it's more or less than it used to be? Bots/scam profiles are against the app's terms of use, and as far as I can tell those terms are enforced, with a reporting mechanism. Tinder *does* have an interest in enforcement because if they don't enforce, their app isn't worth using and that hurts their bottom line, so I'm inclined to think that Tinder doesn't have any worse bot problem than anywhere else.
Also note that open to non-monogamy is NOT the same thing as "open to polyamory." They are two distinct, although related, concepts.
How about that Republican "let's keep gay out of schools" power couple who were into threesomes? Or Falwell's one son, the son's wife and the pool boy? Ok, perhaps they were not truly "free love" polyamory.
They are just licentious, not polyamorous. It seems typical of the right wing that they alternate between prudery and obscenity without ever experiencing sensuality.
I would suggest that the discourse around polyamory has not increased; you've just started noticing it.
There's the well-known incident where a couple of polyamorists from Polynesia were caught polyamorizing on the north side of Cal Poly's football stadium.
while wrapped in polyethylene.
polyethylene pigmented with polychromatic polygons (prepared by a polydactyl painter inspired by polygalaceae), no less!
You may think the show is about finding one's true love, but the real appeal is that for a couple of months the main character gets to screw around with a couple of dozen specimens of the opposite sex.
The news this week: After three whole months of marriage, the Golden Bachelor is filing for divorce.
Shocking, isn't it?
In Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama, from 1973, Commander Norton has two families, one on Mars and one on Earth, and it is portrayed as a typical arrangement.
I read that immigrant workers from Central America have two families.
Well, that's just standard bigamy. Sailors and traveling salesmen have been doing it for centuries.
This is not polyamorous subculture as actually practiced, which is focused on multiple lovers not families, though in any particular case polyamory could mean many different things, in which case there's no reason or intelligence to bundle them all together.
The current coverage seems a lot more sympathetic than past coverage, which I recall had something of a tone of look at these freaks. Ethical nonmonogamy is also getting a lot more coverage. On an anecdotal level I see more people openly talking about it in online spaces in casual conversation, things like this poly group I know did x rather than making the fact they're poly the focus of the conversation.
My thinking is that if you make something easier you tend to get more of it so there is almost certainly more of it than in the past when it was something more unusual and scandalous. That said, the more sympathetic picture also makes it sound more difficult, this isn't about you getting to sleep with multiple partners, it's also your partner doing so AND having to deal with the emotional needs of more than one other person. A lot of people can barely handle the needs of one other person, far less several.
So I would be surprised if it hasn't become more common, but it's starting from a very low base and even a doubling or tripling of the numbers would be hard to detect. And a lot of it is probably stuff that was happening anyway just in a more emotionally mature way with better communication between partners, ethical nonmonogamy with consent rather than both partners cheating and pretending not to notice the others activities. So I think there's more but it's so rare that it's hard to distinguish from noise. Most of us prefer the standard pair bond of a couple, this will always be an interest of a tiny minority.
I must not be in touch with the discourse lately. Until mentioned here, I’d not been seeing anything on the topic…
On a work retreat, I got pigeonholed by a colleague who talked to me at length about how polyamorous people are horribly descriminated against and how he identified as polyamorous and how he has suffered from that professionally.
I have no reason to doubt that what he was saying was true, but aside from a few anecdotes like that, I haven't heard much on the subject--certainly nothing rising to the level of "BS [that] won't stop," so I suspect that I'm either out of the loop (very probably!) and/or there's a quirk in Kevin's media feeds.
Whenever a guy brags about how much he is getting, take it with a big grain of salt. That's just as true today as it has ever been.
Polyamorous folk generally don't advertise this aspect of their private lives to their employer lol, aside from informal if you're partying hey I'm into this kind of thing which one would hope would not filter back up to actual leadership who would discriminate against anyone as such (and again I'm specifically referring to polyamory as in taking multiple lovers, openly as far as your actual lovers, and not multiple families or cheating on the sly).
The whole encounter was a bit weird--I saw the guy typing away on his laptop, casually asked what he was working on, received an answer of "erotica," at which point I tried to politely bail on the convo ("ah, well, I'll leave you to it, then"), but said attempt to bail failed as he then decided he needed to explain to me that it wasn't actually erotica per se, but more of a philosophical treatise on polyamory. I renewed my attempt to politely bail, failed again, and ended up listening for a while to the person angrily denounce prejudice against poly folk like him, before I managed a "sounds unfair, sorry to hear that, well, I better be going" and away I went.
Definitely no judgment on how the guy identified or anything, and I think that consenting adults ought to be free to do more or less anything they please, but I have to admit I was/am pretty comfortable not knowing anything about the sex lives of coworkers.
Anyway, I have no reason to think that this person was typical of any group or identification.
lol
If you search the NYT for polyamory you get several articles. This is a recent one:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/15/magazine/polycule-polyamory-boston.html?searchResultPosition=2
You don’t have to search — there’s been a headline in the front (online) page twice recently.
Polyamory has always been the next big thing since I first heard about it in the early 70's and stories about it being the next big thing pop up periodically like cicadas or something.
The fact is that almost no one wants it. Even given unfettered freedom people just overwhelmingly choose to have modest conventional sex lives.
It's a heck of a lot easier, isn't it? Multiple relationships are hard work - I'm too friggin' lazy.
That's pretty much my take. It's hard enough to keep one person happy.
I mean, some people seem to make it work for them. It's just a terrible fit for me.
I think some monogamous people are scared that they will be unable to find a steady partner if the "hot ones" just start spreading it around.
However, I don't think it works like that.
Non-polyamorous folk often confuse multiple lovers with "relationships", just as people often presuppose sex with "relationships" (or relationships after sex). Even the term "lover" for the polyamorous mostly means someone I have sex with, not someone you actually love (though this form of old-fashioned polyamory exists too, even sexless).
Hmm. I'm not sure it's really that easy to separate physical relationships from emotional ones. It may seem fine in theory but breaks down in practice.
Beautiful celebrity types can engage in that type of thing presumably more easily than most of us can - they just have more opportunity. But look at how messy their personal and sex lives can get. Fleetwood Mac jumps to mind as one example out of many.
Polyamory without the amor is just polyy.
I can report from personal experience that "open marriage" is a really bad idea.
I also recall a spate of SciFi stories in the '70s that promoted "non-traditional" sexual relationships. Not only Heinlein, but also a few other aging horndogs who sought to find high-toned justifications for not only "polyamory" but also incest.
Amazing I survived reading that stuff at a young age without getting truly messed up. Or did I?
When I was a good deal younger, I tried very hard to be polyamorous, but I wasn't very successful at it, so I gave up.
Just as an aside, the guy who created Wonder Woman had a polyamorous relationship:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston
(Continued from my previous post because I ran out of time tending to the needs of Fozzie Bear, aka Mr. Murder Britches, Mr. Poopy-Head von Shitty McFuckface, etc.)
TL;DR: All of by which I mean to say, I suspect when people hear 'polyamory', a lot of them think having lots of 'friends with benetits'. Which is not at all the same thing, as tzimiskes notes above. From what I've heard real polyamory takes a of work to make it work, and it scales exponentially. This is far and away why the people I know who've been in a polyamorous relationship eventually gave it up. Things are hard enough for a husband and wife on diverging career paths to find work in the same institution, city, whatever. Making things work for three or more is a killer.
To name but one obstacle for people who are serious about making their relationship(s) work.
Friends with benefits is a type of relationship in polyamory, though.
The point is being open and honest about your relationships, which may or may not overlap or be shared with all.
It's no different than having someone not your spouse to go to movies your spouse doesn't like. Or hobbies your spouse doesn't share.
The relation here is limited, polyamory is not acquaintanceship or friendship, it's about sex and more specifically lovers, and the confusion even within the subculture about this.
I have wondered if characters who wanted a relationship with Wonder Woman experienced performance anxiety. Not to mention whether she and Superman ever had a casual fling.
I do remember a Superman comic in which Superman and hist best friend Jimmy Olsen were hanging out watching TV and munching popcorn. Somehow or other, I don't remember how, Jimmy must have expressed some sexual interest in Wonder Woman. Supes told him: "She's an Amazon, Jimmy; you wouldn't survive the experience."
!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Superman+Wonder+Woman+kiss&atb=v355-1&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
in the funny-because-it's-true zone of humor, I suspect that this is the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people who ever worked in this profession. God knows, it was certainly true for my catering work cohort (which was nice because the gratuity was baked in) back in the day. Also, lots drugs, by which I mean pinch hits in the freezer, cocaine in the bathrooms, and everybody heading to the nearest water hole that was still open at 2 am.
"In the 1950s and 1960s it surprisingly emerged among libertarian science fiction writers." I think this is code for Robert Heinlein, but maybe there's more to it."
Probably includes Theodore Surgeon and "Godbody," to say nothing of Philip Jose Farmer and the REAL polyamory, sex with alien creatures.
dear god, why isn't this on streaming?
They could make a fortune!
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1780621113812295683
“Never fight uphill me boys, never fight uphill.”
In the days of muskets, fighting up had it's advantages.
Especially when lightsabers are involved.
Actual violence sure to inevitably follow if thinking this is a realistic long-term problem solving strategy.
They could just keep it up forever and it evolves into an annual national clubbing tournament, winner gets one small valley to lord it over for that year.
Jeez, I recall "The Harrad Experiment" from my undergrad days. Some things always come around.
Oh gawd. It, uh, tended to the didactic style. Didactism as written for a high school student.
Yep, I remember that one if but vaguely. I also remember "The Ice Storm" which also has a "key party".
It also might mean that it's happening but people aren't talking about it?
I've been in a twenty five year long same sex marriage - but my spouse and I do discuss, and allow each other to date. We always discuss this before it happens, though in our marriage we can count the others on one hand each.
My spouse has been dating a specific someone seriously (about once a month) for years now, since before the pandemic. And although they live in a different home circle, we consider that to be a poly connection. I make them breakfast when they stay over for the weekend, and we go to some concerts and events are a group.
But we don't talk about it being polyamory. It's not like it matters to anyone else!
Ages ago, I read a book by an Englishwoman back in the 19th century. In one chapter, she recounts her visit to Utah and tells all about polygamist life among the Mormons. It was pretty boring, but I'm sure that prurient interest helped the book sales. Some things never change.
P.S. According to the book reviews in Godey's Ladies Book, back in the 19th century the bigamy novel was all the rage. Some authors even cranked them out as in the reviewer noting "yet another".
There is the obverse also, as was published today in the NYT>>>>a good, monogamous relationship without sex:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/magazine/sexless-marriage.html
I may have some minor mention in Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife, a tome recording the real life effects from that period.
I mention this because it came up in a recent phone conversation about being nudist in Mill Valley, 1970's, just across the GG Bridge....Yikes, I had forgotten.
All of which reminds me that once I was murderous over some maybe yes, maybe no, infidelity....murderously jealous...just unbelievable that I was going to actually kill someone....now I hard squint my eyes and...still can't believe the emotions this roiled inside of me.
Usually I've been, regrettably, on the other side of these triangles...but to be in that pot of boiling rage myself....Well...!
(Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back)
(No more, no more, no more, no more)
(Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more)
Woah, woman, oh, woman, don't treat me so mean
You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen
I guess if you said so
I'd have to pack my things and go (that's right)
(Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back)
(No more, no more, no more, no more)
(Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more)
What you say?
Best Wishes, Traveller
Depends on your definition and context.
Taking on multiple lovers crosses over many subcultures. Those who would identify as polyamorous welcome multiple lovers, whether they're married or not (either person), one example is Burner subculture.
Lots of younger folks are naturally polyamorous, pre-marriage and playing the field, most of us consider this normal and not polyamorous as a distinct subculture.
Then you have your bored married swingers, often engaging in polyamorous activities but likely not openly identifying as such, or thinking of the folks with whom they engage in these trysts as "lovers", and/or keeping private for other religious or community/subcultural reasons (independent from just privacy in particular, most even identifying as polyamorous or Burners aren't openly advertising this to just anyone).
Then you also have your cheaters and other people with sexual compulsions/obsessions they can't control, but would never actually identify as polyamorous per se.
Mais non.
https://youtu.be/gczkM8cL2hs
Didn't Margaret Mead consider this to an extent in "Coming of Age in Samoa"?