Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners Read Online Free PDF Page B

marriages are remarriages for at least one of the spouses. While divorce rates are higher in the United States than in most other countries, serial monogamy is a worldwide trend. And one of the leading causes of divorce is infidelity. The original meaning of monogamy was to mate and be sexually exclusive for life. Divorcing and remarrying was originally called serial polygamy, not serial monogamy.
    We could argue whether all marriages should continue for a lifetime, but that’s not the issue I want to raise here. Rather, I am pointing to the false connection many people make between monogamy and fidelity.
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    Monogamy and commitment are often considered synonymous as well.
    To me, faithfulness has more to do with honesty, respect, and loyalty than sexual exclusivity, and commitment is about keeping agreements. The content of the agreement is irrelevant as far as commitment is concerned.
    Somehow, we’ve really gotten confused when relationships that include secret extramarital affairs are considered monogamous and those that end in divorce are considered committed monogamous marriages.
    Of course, people who identify as monogamous have no corner on infidelity. Those who attempt to practice polyamory can also find themselves having secret affairs, which is all the more disheartening to partners who imagined that their couple relationship was based on honesty and consensual extramarital relating. Ellen and her husband Doug had been happily married for twelve years, and while they’d agreed from the beginning that their marriage would be open, neither had gone beyond the playful flirtation stage.
    Suddenly, unexpectedly Ellen found herself head over heels in love with William, a man whom both had been acquainted with for years. She’d kept the depth of her feelings a secret from Doug for several months, not wanting to upset him and afraid that he would interfere with her newfound joy.
    Meanwhile, William, knowing that they had an open marriage, assumed that Doug was fully informed. When Ellen finally confessed that she was in love with William, Doug predictably felt angry and betrayed, feared that she would leave him, and wanted to retreat to monogamy. The habit of keeping secrets can be deeply engrained, even when couples agree to have an open relationship.

SWINGING
    For many people, polyamory is just another word for swinging . In fact, prior to the invention of the word polyamory in the early 1990s, the word swinging , when it came into use in the 1970s, did mean much the same thing polyamory now implies. Like polyamory, the definition of swinging and swingers has evolved through the portrayal of these lifestyles in the popular media.
    I know this because shortly after the publication of my book Love without Limits in 1992, I gave a talk at the annual Lifestyles Conference to promote it. In my talk, I discussed my impression that while swinging shares the 1 4
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    values of honesty and consensual decision making with polyamory, it differs from polyamory in two ways. First, swingers generally had sex first and perhaps became friends later, whereas polyamorists became friends first and maybe had sex afterward. Second, swinging, while allowing for sexual nonmonogamy, demanded emotional monogamy. That is, in swinging, falling in love with a partner other than your spouse is forbidden. In polyamory, the word itself suggests that loving all of your partners is appropriate.
    While my description is certainly true for some swingers, when my talk concluded, I was surrounded by polite but angry swingers, including many leaders in the swing movement who informed me that their way of practicing swinging had always been identical to what I was now calling polyamory. In fact, some of them were involved in intimate networks that were almost as old as I was at the time. The media, they said, were responsible for sensationalizing the lifestyle and presenting it as shallow and