Polyamory - A Relationship Alternative

Polypedia

Polygamy - having more than one spouse at a time

Polyandry - having more than one husband at a time

Polygyny - having more than one wife at a time

Polyamory - intimate, loving relationship with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and con­sent of all involved.  A path based on choice, trust, openness and honesty.
 

 

Erotic energy thrives
on variety. 

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or tantra massage?

 

 

 

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Sex is a sacrament, not a prison. While monogamy can be a beautiful, even sacred bond, it might not be the agreement that best suits everyone. Our thinking that monogamy is inherently a nobler arrangement than any other has created a nation of hypocrites -- which is what we’ve become. Marianne Williamson A Woman’s Worth

 

 

These three ingredients are: friendship, mutual respect, and passion. When these three are not given priority the seeds for affairs are planted.

Of these three, the most misunderstood is passion. Romance and passion are linked and essential in creating sexual intimacy. Susan Campbell in her book The Couple’s Journey describes five stages couples experience. The first and the one most sought after is romance. This stage, unfortunately the shortest, when ended brings grief to the couple. The end comes when broken agreements occur and trust is disrupted.

The second stage in Susan Campbell’s approach to the couple’s journey is power/struggle. Couples know this struggle because of the fights and arguments that evolve. They blame each other for the pain and hurt they feel. What they often do not recognize is that they are grieving over the lost intimacy and love in their relationship.

It is possible for couples to find their way back to the romance and passion they knew. To do so they must go through their mutually created impasses, which enables them to experience a more mature relationship. Those who do not, set themselves up for emotional distance, loneliness, and the potential for affairs, since a drive within all of us is to experience the love and touch of a friend and lover.

To avoid affairs and sustain passion and intimacy in our love relationships, it is essential that each person opens and challenges oneself to personal learning, and the expansion of their sexuality.

Growth of this kind is essential in any relationship, which is alive and exciting. What follows are seven ways I suggest to create and sustain intimacy:

In my work with couples creating and maintaining consistent time for intimacy and pleasure is one of the most difficult of the above challenges to manage. Tension in the relationship usually builds when suggestions or attention is given to this matter. A myriad of excuses are offered to ensure that intense closeness is not achieved. Two career families with children have created extremely busy lives with precious little time for intimacy. Thus, when a couple reaches a crisis point regaining intimacy is low on the list of priorities even though critical and essential in moving beyond the impasse. Each person is usually intent in defending one’s own chosen position. Slow and deliberate steps are required to regain intimacy. Each person needs to make clear agreements with oneself to: rebuild trust, keep agreements, suspend judgments, focus on oneself and not one’s partner, and demonstrate a willingness to take risks. Above all, the agreement of both is to make the quality of the relationship a priority in their lives. This is a tall order for the struggling couple, yet solid, healthy intimacy is worth the challenge.

Having come to grips with these issues, the couple will find themselves on firmer ground allowing them to confront poten­tially threatening crises with grace and understanding. The cou­ple that has done their work can now approach the potential crisis of an outside relationship (individuals or couples) as an opportunity to enhance their own relationship without a threat to the primary bond. Consequently, a couple may decide to include another person or couple in their relationship for added intimacy (sexual or non-sexual) without fears of disruption, rather of strengthening the primary bond. Many couples have chosen this model to move beyond the dilemma posed by monogamy/non-monogamy. The term given to it (when sexual) is responsible non-monogamy or poly­amory. Couples who have made this choice are part of a rapidly expanding network of people challenging long held beliefs and myths about cultural norms of what makes a healthy couple.

Deborah Anapol in her groundbreaking book Polyamory - The New Love Without Limits confronts the fact that most of us are polyamorists at heart whether we are willing or not to admit it to ourselves. She contends that serial monogamy (marriage-divorce-re-marriage) is not monogamy at all. In her words, she states: “Unlike lifelong monogamy, it allows us to express our polyamorous nature while maintaining a monogamous fiction in which our multiple mates are separated by linear time.” (p.viii)

With the heavy emphasis on monogamy, few people realize they have a choice about "sexualoving" (a term created within the polyamory community) partners they can have at one time. For most people it is black or white, and if a new person appears in the relationship in the form of an affair the result is often separation or divorce. Polyamory offers an alternative. It occurs in many forms and relationships.

The bottom line in all of these expressions is that there is not a separation between sex and loving and there is an element of conscious choosing by the couple.

Granted, there are people who are threatened by this prospect and change in their long held beliefs, but for those who value the sustaining of intimacy, passion and friendship in relationship polyamory, for some is a deep­ly rewarding choice.

Couples who have made this choice have, in many cases, created a consciousness and confidence about their loving that goes beyond what most people have known through movies or literature. Granted couples that have reached this level of awareness have done so through intention and have overcome numerous challenges. They have learned to manage their jealousy and have experienced the joys of "compersion" - a term invented to describe the opposite of jealousy. Compersion is the emotion experienced when we find that two people we love feel affection for each other. I have known and experienced this sensation in my own life and value it as a high form of freedom and affection. This is unconditional love. Deborah Anapol puts it this way, “Just having a concept which acknowledges that you have the potential of feeling joy and expansion rather than fear and contraction in response to a loved one’s sharing their love with others can go a long way toward transforming jealousy.” (p.64)