Love first, not sex
A basic explanation by Loving More, a polyamory advocacy group (www.lovemore.com), states that it’s not really about having more sex, but having more love.
“The point is love, romance, intimacy and affection with more than one person, openly and ethically by mutual agreement all around. For some, sex is a driving factor in relationships. For others, romance and emotional or spiritual connection are more important.”
“Polyamory is not a fancy word for cheating because the latter involves deception and violation of an agreement,” the group says.
“The point of polyamory is not secrecy but openness, communication, and sharing the love. It’s about disclosure, trust, and respect.”
It’s also not about “swinging” or 1960s style free love (which is strictly about sex) because polyamory emphasises “connection and relationship building”.
Susan admits she has done her share of swinging. “After a bad break-up, I signed up at an adult ‘friendship’ website and chatted online, then slept with some of the guys who seemed interesting. But after a while, it got boring, the same old routine. Now, I’m more interested in companions whom I can connect with.”
An article in the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality (Feb 27, 2003) by Derek McCullough and David S. Hall, PhD, says: “Even the few societies that theoretically espouse monogamy, like ours (the United States) have trouble showing evidence that it works.”
So humans resort instead to serial monogamy, “an unconscious compromise between the cultural ideal of monogamy and the facts of human nature – in other words, we acknowledge that you can love more than one person, but only one at a time. (But) the destructive effects of serial monogamy on children are well documented, with eight million single parent families in the US and infidelity-fuelled acrimonious divorces.”
It continues: “Polyamorists say that love should be unconditional, rather than the monogamous proposition that ‘I will love you on the condition that you will not love anyone else’. They say that love is an infinite, not a finite commodity. For example, my third child is loved as much, if not more, than the other two.
“Polyamorists say that jealousy is not innate, inevitable and impossible to overcome. But they deal with jealousy often, usually successfully. There is a new term for the opposite of jealousy. ‘Compersion’ is the feeling of joy that comes from knowing that the one you love is well loved by someone else.”
