Dear Friend and Reader:
As I mentioned earlier, I’m at the Loving More East Coast Conference in upstate New York. Long-term readers know that I’ve been involved with something called the polyamory movement — responsible non-monogamy — since the mid-1990s, and long before I knew the word, since the mid-1980s. Loving More is actually a Colorado-based magazine for which I write, and for 22 years they’ve sponsored these retreats on the East and West Coasts.
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Chuy Garcia works the registration desk at the Loving More east coast conference. Photo by Eric Francis.
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For those who have never heard the word or who think it’s a kind of plastic, polyamory is a form of alternative sexuality to serial monogamy, “permanent” monogamy and one night stands. The difference between poly and cheating is that the discussions are had out in the open. Poly by definition potentially means multiple partners, but the core is no secrets among partners.
The difference between poly and swinging is that swinging is about sex and poly is about relationships that may or may not include sex.
Every year there are a few relatively small conferences where the a small part of the tribe gathers. Polyamory is mainstream. If you do a Google search on the word, you come up with 2,190,000 returns. There are not quite that many people at this retreat center near Saratoga; there are about 70 of us. The median age is about 40 or 50 — it’s an older crowd in general, though some interesting, high-energy young people are here.