Polyamorous Relationships Research Articles

Polyamorous Women, Sexual Subjectivity and Power

This article explores polyamorous women’s potential to enlarge the concept of sexual subjectivity through their engagement in nontraditional relationships and their attempts to reject sexual objectification. Polyamorous people openly engage in romantic, sexual, and/or affective relationships with multiple people simultaneously. Polyamory differs from swinging with its emphasis on long-term, emotionally intimate relationships and from adultery with its focus on honesty and (ideally) full disclosure of the network of sexual relationships to all who participate in or are affected by them. Both men and women have access to additional partners in polyamorous relationships, distinguishing them from polygamy. This ethnographic analysis expands sociological understanding of women’s sexuality by investigating this previously unexamined area of sexual subjectivity. Specifically, the author analyzes some of the ways that polyamorous women expand so-called normal social roles, discusses their sexual lives and identities, and explores novel and traditional forms of power polyamorous practice engenders for these women’s relationships.

How Do Social Movements Decide to Move? Polyamorous Relationships and Legal Mobilization

Many social movements mobilize for legal rights, though there is controversy about the motivation for doing so. The recent debate about same-sex marriages raises the question whether attaining public legal status for private relationships is important for instrumental, political or cultural-symbolic reasons. This project addresses this question from the perspective of a social movement which has not, so far, sought legal status - the polyamorous community. Polyamory is a nontraditional lifestyle involving relationships between more than two partners. Focusing on interviews with salient and active members of the polyamorous community in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as on polyamorous publications and online activity, the study (still a work in progress) examines why there have been no large-scale efforts to attain a public legal status for the private choice to lead a polyamorous relationship or build a polyamorous family, and explores the conditions under which mobilization would be initiated.

Monogamy's Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence

Marriage and monogamy feature prominently on the public stage, but not all romantic relationships come in pairs. While people across the political spectrum debate the different-sex requirement of civil marriage, this article focuses on another limiting principle of monogamy's core institution: the twoness requirement. In particular, the article elaborates the practice and ethical principles of contemporary relationships of more than two people, called polyamory. Such relationships take many forms and aspire to several identifiable values, including radical honesty, consent, and the privileging of more sexual and loving experiences over other activities and emotions such as jealousy. The article asks why polyamorous relationships face such severe normative censure. After considering various objections, the article concludes that one key component of the censure is, paradoxically, the ability of most people to imagine themselves having sex with someone other than a primary partner - in other words, a paradox of prevalence. Despite the widespread desire for more than one sexual partner, however, and despite relatively widespread nonmonogamy, most people do not engage in polyamorous relationships. But neither do most people affirmatively choose monogamy: Laws and norms exert strong pressure on people to promise monogamy, and most people simply succumb to this pressure. The article argues that although monogamy is a sound choice for many, polyamory is a sound choice for others. Building on this premise, the article considers some ways that information-forcing principles of contract law might be used to help encourage people to make active, reflective choices about monogamy.

Outside Belonging

This article draws from an ongoing Australian research project with over 60 culturally and sexually diverse women in monogamous, open, and polyamorous relationships with bisexual-identifying and/or bisexual-behaving men. Positioned within a queer feminist deconstructive theoretical framework, this research provides insights into the border existences of these women and their partners, and their negotiations of “new rules” and boundaries in order to construct healthy relationships. What are the various ways that HIV/AIDS impacts women in relationships with bisexual men? How do they deal with issues such as social, community, workplace and familial ostracism? Probyn's term, “outside belonging” (1996: 9) is applicable to the border existences of these women and their bisexual male partners. Their multi-sexual relationships are both “outside” gendernormative and heteronormative constructs of marital and defacto relationships and yet “belonging,” for the partners may “pass” as a “normal” couple. They are also “outside” the dominant constructs of Australian gay identity and community while simultaneously “belonging” due to their partners', and sometimes their own, same-sex attractions and relationships.

Seven Poems for Three

SUMMARY These poems describe the evolution of a polyamorous relationship among three women over a period of a year and a half. The original couple had been together five years and was ready to explore a more complex family structure as a powerful alternative to the heterosexual nuclear family model.

Bad Friend Book

SUMMARY This piece was written for a one-woman performance in San Francisco. The theme of the show was “mean and nasty,” and this piece focuses, with humor and without mercy, on the less enticing aspects of lesbian polyamorous relationships.