Abstract
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth. Beginning with an auto-ethnographic reflection on the way the ‘significance’ was recognised and misrecognised in one polyamorous ‘thrupple’, I introduce three case studies of people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships in order to bring a cultural studies method of the particular to the study of intimacy. For the individuals in these case studies, the practice and experience of non/monogamy is inextricably linked to the ideas and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, sex work, friendship, HIV status and ability. Sketching a middle path between the romantic’s dream of love as a state of exception or exemption from the social and the theorist’s map of the patterned effects of hetero- and mono-normativities, this article attends to the contingency, flexibility and incoherence which so often underpins the sense we make of relationships, even as that sense is shaped by the practices, ideals and institutions of intimacy, love and friendship.
Highlights
The shift in Adelaide’s commitment to authenticity at work caused a practical relationship dilemma. Since her partner’s consent to non-monogamy hinged on an assumption that sex at work lacked pleasure, desire and intimacy—an assumption that Adelaide had come to believe was false—Adelaide was forced to choose between an omission that sustained the arrangement and honesty that could end it: I think sometimes partners have this idea that because ‘work is work’ they don’t need to feel threatened by it, and that’s a really important thing, um, that we can divorce our own pleasures from the service that we provide at work
Adelaide’s relationship with Erin ended before she could resolve the tension caused by their very different ways of making sense of her work, and she is determined to ensure her relationship is more compatible with her understanding of sex, intimacy and pleasure, ‘I feel like this is a good opportunity to be able to say, from the start, if I enter into a relationship that I want it to have some form of negotiated non-monogamy.’
The material and discursive realities of health, dis/ability, gender, friendship and work are just some of the factors that have the capacity to texture one’s experience of non-monogamous relationship structures
Summary
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth.
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