One Perspective of Having Polyamorous Parents

A headline at refinery29.com caught my eye. Dylan Blair Bass had "My Parents Were Sex-Positive & Polyamorous Before It Was Cool."

I was in third grade when I first heard my parents having sex. We’d just moved, and my room was on the other side of the small house. I had trouble sleeping, so sometimes I’d lay down in the living room on our tiny couch at night, eventually nodding off only to be awoken a short while later by animalistic sounds coming from my parents’ bedroom. I don’t know how I knew what the sounds were, but my reaction was one of disgust, fascination, and a little bit of shame.

Sex is natural and there is no reason for parents to hide that they have sex. They should make it clear that affection, meaning consensual touch and interaction, is nothing for anyone to be ashamed of. Parents should also show their children how they can safely avoid having to hear noises they don't want to continue to hear.

I was in second grade when my parents began practicing polyamory. I don’t think they ever sat my siblings and I down and told us what they were doing, but they also didn’t hide that they were having romantic relationships with other people.

We are depending on the writer's recollection. In general, parents should raise children to understand that there is diversity in relationships. NOT being in a relationship is OK. Having a monogamous relationship is OK. Having a nonmonogamous relationship is OK, if that is what the agreements include.

My friends all knew my family was weird: I was once told by a friend that my parents being polyamorous was “worse than being gay,” and that they should have the cops called on them. From this point on I swore I would never be like my parents. I wanted to follow a path toward normalcy to the best of my ability. 

Sad.

I felt like a late bloomer, but it had taken me the duration of my time in college to come to terms with the fact that I was gay and non-binary as opposed to bi and a girl who was “mostly really only interested in men.”

It would be helpful for young people to truly have the freedom to figure out why they are earlier on.

Despite the disdain I felt for polyamory in my childhood, I no longer see polyamory as a bad thing. There was never any one event that changed my feelings — I suppose I just needed to grow up a little bit, and bear witness to relationships outside of my parents’. I think it’s really cool that polyamory has become so much more common, and that there are so many more resources for people who are interested in it. I wish my parents would have had more resources available to them when I was a kid; it probably would have made things a lot easier for everyone involved.  

 

When I asked my mom what she would have done differently, her response was fairly simple: She said she wishes she would have dug deeper into what it means to co-parent in a polyamorous relationship. She wishes she would have read as many books on polyamorous parenting as possible, and would have talked to other people raising children while living a polyamorous lifestyle.

It is wonderful that there is more awareness and there are more resources now.

At 28, I’m still single. I don’t think I have a real answer as to why, but I’m a lot more okay with it now than I used to be. I have healthy and fulfilling relationships with friends and family members, many of whom are also perpetually single. When it comes down to it, sex just isn’t that important to me. Would I like to be in a serious romantic relationship? Yes, and I really hope it happens for me eventually. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay. 

Sometimes media gives people the idea that they must be partnered in an ongoing relationship starting in their teens and that they should always have a partner from that time onward. But it is OK to not have a partner. Or to have multiple partners, even if there are other people who don't like the idea of those relationships.

Let people have the relationships to which they mutually agree. Let people thrive even if they aren't in a relationship.