What is polyamory?

What is polyamory?

Polyamory, from the Greek root ‘poly’ (many), and Latin root ‘amor’ (love), describes a mode of practicing relationships wherein the involved individuals are free to pursue loving relationships beyond their primary romantic partner.

In many ways, polyamory is an accurate description for how virtually all people relate to one another.  Anyone with a family is accustomed to loving more than one person at a time, such as siblings or parents.  We love our friends and our neighbors.

Polyamory only becomes controversial when we apply the term to romantic love, a complicated and somewhat poorly understood neurochemical response to interpersonal interaction involving  nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin.

Since the agricultural revolution, most western societies have organized themselves according to patriarchy.  There is strong evidence to support the idea that prior to the agricultural revolution, for most of the evolutionary history of human existence, a more communal and polyamorous attitude dominated human interactions, including romantic relationships.  After the advent of agriculture, western societies became preoccupied with the mechanics of passing land and other acquired wealth from generation to generation – and with this new preoccupation came a massive social shift, away from loving fraternity between members of the tribe or social group towards individualism centered on possessiveness.

This new greed manifested in a social order that protected the transference of property from father to oldest son.  It was at the advent of agriculture that women first became subjugated to men, that feminine sexuality came to be regarded as a commodity to be regulated by men.  Promiscuity was replaced with prudishness.  Women were denied the company of men beyond their masters so that these masters could be sure that their property was passed to a legitimate heir.  Sexual pleasure for women became at best an afterthought, and now the proper scope of sexual activity for a woman was limited to procreative activities.  This desexualization of women reached its apex during the reign of Queen Victoria of England (1837-1901) and the bias against female sexuality is obvious in the social and scientific work of the era, including Darwin's On the Origin of the Species.

For some decades, since the free-love movement of the 1960s, human beings have been critically examining the virtues and shortcomings of the male-centric monogamous relationship model.  Recent scholarship including works like Sex at Dawn have lent a scientific and historical perspective in support of polyamorous relationships to a field that had already been enriched by philosophical and psychological advocates such as the authors of The Ethical Slut.

It is not only possible to practice responsible polyamory, but far preferable.  It is a model that provides far greater security to individuals who are seeking love, acceptance, support, frequent sex, close personal connections, lifetime commitments, stable parenting environments, and virtually every other thing that human beings have generally sought through monogamous relationships.

This blog will examine issues surrounding polyamory.  It will offer relationship advice for those in both open and closed relationships, from a polyamorist’s perspective.  Finally, this blog will advocate for polyamory, a lifestyle choice with nearly universal appeal, both for single people and for people who find themselves in unfulfilling conventional relationships.

I hope you will visit us often.  Write me at patientpolyamorist@gmail.com.

PP