I was just looking at the slim pickings on CNN.com and found this article that caught my attention. Here is the lead to the article. Even the fact that this makes the front page of CNN is incredible in itself; it reveals how boxed in we are about what is possible, or normal, in relationships. And of course, it’s only vindicated because they are “struggling to make ends meet.” Finally, note at the end of the piece how open minded the guy’s new girlfriend will have to be, in order to tolerate something so utterly outrageous as adults living together and getting along.
(CNN) — Struggling to make ends meet, trying to dig themselves out of debt, Nicole Thompson-Arce and her husband have moved in with her ex-husband.
Together, the unlikely threesome of Omaha, Nebraska, is raising two young daughters from the first marriage.
It’s the kind of situation that has left cable guys howling.
“They’d never heard anything like this,” Thompson-Arce, 28, remembered with a laugh. “And they’re in people’s homes everyday.”
When she and Craig Thompson, 42, were going through a divorce in 2005, this was not a deal either of them could have imagined striking. It was a messy divorce, the kind involving a custody dispute. But once they ironed out that battle, agreeing to joint custody, Thompson-Arce said they were able to move on and forward.
Though the people involved don’t seem to know and don’t use the word, this is a form of polyamory. Though to our knowledge the threesome is not sexually involved as a triad, what they are doing expresses some of the potential of poly living situations (for example, a more convenient, workable way to raise kids, particularly under joint custody). Of course adding sex opens up a whole new emotional dimension, but if there is some clarity in the relationships and people understand what they want and what they have to offer, it doesn’t need to be that complicated.
The basic issues are the same, respect for space, and living something other than jealousy as a way of life.
Note: Whoops! I posted this under the wrong article! I am posting it here where it belongs. Sorry about that!
Regarding the people in the article, I believe that this kind of scenario is going to become more common as is the one where grown children reside with their parents even after marriage because of the economic advantages of that. I have seen grown siblings and their significant others living together in one apartment or house to save money. We will end up being more collective and the short-lived “nuclear family” experiment may fall to the wayside for economic reasons.
The nuclear family ideology happened because, as Stephanie Coontz said in one of her books, the WWII machine cranked out so many goods but there weren’t enough buyers with war-ravaged Europe and Japan and they needed a mobile work force so the idea of young couples moving away and focusing on just themselves and their children was pushed via the media. This was a great way to sell more household goods, cars, and homes. People were told, via media articles, public service announcements and in TV sitcoms that social security would take care of their aging parents so they could be free to concentrate on their own kids and move away. This was seen as a “new life” for them, a prosperous life. This was when the old “keeping up with the Jones family” line was promoted and the “buy this washer or these dishes and you can be like the Cleavers or the Donna Reed family” ideology was inferred. The more sustainable way of living of the Depression era was forgotten and it was every-man-for-himself. It is no longer sustainable so we have to move to something better; communal living such as what this family in the article is doing makes better sense for the planet not to mention the children.
This is a pretty great, and the popular reactions to it had me nodding my head, recognizing an old story quite similar. Years ago I was temping in a small-town law office, and the outcome of a certain domestic case had the office totally baffled and freaked out. Hubby and Wifey were in the process of dividing up all their stuff, from the hunting rifles to the Dale Earnhardt memorial plate set. I’m not exaggerating. Anyway, working in the front office, I was a silent audience for the unfolding of a plot I could not have made up. Things began to get interesting when Hubby started dating a friend of Wifey’s.
This could have led to violence (and people would have understood), but instead they all decided to calm down and go to their favorite local spot to swill beer and play pool. There, Girlfriend introduced Wifey to her brother. You can guess how this turned out. Hubby moved into the basement of the house he’d shared with Wifey. Boyfriend and Wifey upstairs, Girlfriend and Hubby downstairs, and the divorced couple’s school aged kids all kinds of happy because they now had 4 parents to pay attention to them.
The paralegal in my office was horrified. Scandalized. She could not have been more appalled if they all actually had been fucking each other. I said, “What’s so bad about it? They’re getting along, the kids are happy, sounds like a win-win.” Then she told me to get out of her office.
You are right. It is a polyamorous situation. Otherwise people who are terrified by polyamory wouldn’t be having the same triggered reactions to it. Thanks for sharing this story and your insight.