Dear Friend and Reader:
Hello from the Poly Living conference, just outside of Philadelphia. Poly Living is created by a magazine called Loving More, one of two conferences they sponsor each year. Today I managed to get myself up and going to attend a 9 am session on polyamory and families. Parenting is hard work, and until very recently it did indeed take a village to raise a child. Polyamory can offer the potential for having additional help and support and can — if done well — provide a far better environment than many single-parent households, or two-parent households where the parents have no time to be with their children.
Before I get into that, here is a one-paragraph definition of “polyamory.”
Basically, we are talking about any form of relationship other than exclusive pair-bonding, that is consciously and honestly experienced. There is no set definition, but we know what it is not. If you’re married and you have someone “on the side,” that is not polyamory. If you are married and you have someone on the side and you speak openly with your partner about it, that is polyamory. So, poly is not so much as what one does as how one does it; and most of that “doing” involves communication.
In another post I will get into how and why this pushes so many buttons, but I can pretty much sum it up in a few words: honesty is challenging; it seems easier to either suppress your needs, or to lie. So most of being polyamorous, besides the same challenges navigating the complex realm of human emotion that we all must navigate anyway, is about learning how to be honest and holding space for others to be honest. Or, looked at another way, aspiring to maturity and integrity.
As for families. The presentation this morning was given by Carol Morotti-Meeker, a family therapist from the Philadelphia area who is affiliated with the Institute for 21st Century Relationships, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. The questions she covered, such as bringing new adults into the family, compatible parenting styles for non-biological-parent caregivers, and how to handle changes in the lives of adults that affect the kids, are questions that everyone with children has to face.
10 minutes into my umpteenth polyamory conference since 1997, I noticed again that the people who really need to be here are the ones who consider themselves monogamous, because the presenters here are asking the questions that everyone wrestles with. The US Census Bureau reports that first marriages last an average of eight years. That is an average; many last a lot less. So being married obviously does not protect children from change or instability. We all know this from personal experience.