An Extensive Article on the Reality of Polyamory

Alex French has an extensive article about polyamory, starting with polyandry. The more articles like this one, the better. People need to know that there are various nonmonogamous relationship models, and that like any other relationship, there are realities to deal with.

Jaiya Ma, the center of the clan, is a 34-year-old with dark, wavy hair and caramel skin. Her life is wide open; she falls in love easily, suffers willingly. Next to her is Ian Ferguson, a thin 44-year-old with a shaved head and a goatee, feeding bits of eggs Benedict to their energetic 2-year-old son, Eamon. Ian and Jaiya have been lovers for four years. Sitting across from Jaiya is Jon Hanauer, an extremely fit 48-year-old wearing wire-rimmed glasses, who serves as Eamon's primary caretaker. He and Jaiya have been in a committed relationship for almost a decade.

Elaborating…

Neither Jon nor Ian is legally married to Jaiya. Both are allowed to see other women. But the three of them live a lifestyle that—much of the time—isn't that different from a conventional marriage. They're one of an estimated 500,000 polyamorous families in the United States.

That would mean at least one and a half million people at the bare minimum.

Jaiya, who founded a successful sex-education company, is typical of the women in polyandrous triads: intelligent, self-possessed, professionally accomplished.

Certainly, we’re not talking about uneducated, oppressed women.

"We're going through right now what homosexuals went through 30 or 40 years ago," says Matt Bullen, a 42-year-old writer and married dad in Seattle who is part of a polyamorist cluster that encompasses five people and two legal marriages. "We need to start putting photos on the desk of ourselves and our partners together. When I'm out in public with my wife and my girlfriend, I need to say, 'These are my partners.'"

That will help bring about full marriage equality sooner rather than later.

Mary, a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate in economics at Boston University (who asked that her real name not be used), says she's known since she was 14 that monogamy was anathema to her. "That's when I realized that maybe it didn't make sense for me to suppress these feelings just because of a societal norm," she says. Hardly an insatiable minx, Mary claims she's "not a sexual person at all" and still lives—in a polyandrous triad—with her first boyfriend.

Again, there’s a word or two that the FCC would have some problems with, so if you are actually someone who likes reading about polyamory but can’t handle reading the “f” word, be warned. Go read all of it.