This video comes to us from Newsweek, and is called “POLYAMORY: Making Poly Love Work.” For anyone not familiar with the term polyamory (from Greek πολύ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [love]), Wikipedia defines it as “the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.”
From the Newsweek article:
Terisa and Matt and Vera and Larry—along with Scott, who’s also at this dinner—are not swingers, per se; they aren’t pursuing casual sex. Nor are they polygamists of the sort portrayed on HBO’s Big Love; they aren’t religious, and they don’t have multiple wives. But they do believe in “ethical nonmonogamy,” or engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person—based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. They are polyamorous, to use the term of art applied to multiple-partner families like theirs, and they wouldn’t want to live any other way.
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More from Newsweek:
Some polyamorists are married with multiple love interests, while others practice informal group marriage. Some have group sex—and many are bisexual—while those like Greenan have a series of heterosexual, one-on-one relationships. Still others don’t identify as poly but live a recognizably poly lifestyle. Terisa describes her particular cluster as a “triad,” for the number of people involved, and a “vee” for its organization, with Terisa at the center (the point of the V) and her two primary partners, Scott and Larry (who are not intimate with each other) as the tips of each arm. Other poly vocabulary exists, too: “spice” is the plural of “spouse”; “polygeometry” is how a polyamorous group describes their connections; “polyfidelitous” refers to folks who don’t date outside their menage; and a “quad” is a four-member poly group.
What unique challenges do individuals in polyamorous relationships face from society, from religion, from the government? What do you think are the advantages of being in a polyamorous relationship? Is it something that you have ever considered or experienced? How do children factor into these challenges? What role would jealousy play, and how could it be overcome?
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Image by Ratatosk, used with permission.