#eli sheff

Polyamorous community wisdom is clear that, if you want polyamorous relationships that work well, you should date others who want polyamory as well. Dating monogamous people has a tendency to set polyamorous people (and often their monogamous sweethearts) up for conflict and heartache because they want fundamentally different things. Polyamorous folks are not trying to steal your monogamous partner because they want partners who are already polyamorous.

Young adults from polyamorous families noted their ability to create emotionally intimate relationships where ever they went. This provides a sense of safety and connection for these budding adults when leaving home for college, a new job, or a move to a new city... Even though these young adults learned relationship skills from a specific romantic configuration among the adults, the grown kids transfer the skills to other (often non-romantic) relationships and build emotionally intimate friendship networks wherever they go.

First, for the vast majority of the respondents in my study, the advantages of polyamorous family life significantly outweigh the disadvantages. While polyamorous family life may come with three complexities and scheduling headaches, it appears to be well worth it to the people who sustain those relationships over time, and the kids they raise. Second, all of the disadvantages inherent in polyamorous family life are also present in other blended families as well: Kids in other large families feel crowded too, all kinds of families face various stigmas, and divorced people date people who break up and go away. In other words, there are no disadvantages that are specific to polyamorous families. Third, there are, in fact, advantages that are specific to polyamorous families. These include things like a wider social safety net and the relationship skills to maintain it. Fourth and perhaps most importantly, polyamorous families can provide healthy, loving, stable environments in which children can thrive.

Many people express surprise when they experience intense jealousy and I frequently hear things like 'I'm so shocked that I'm jealous!' To which I always reply, 'I'm shocked that you're shocked!' Jealousy is perfectly natural and a completely normal reaction to your precious beloved being intimate with someone else. My best advice about jealousy to anyone in an open relationship is: expect it, accept it, and learn to manage it without murder or mayhem.

Those who cast one form of family as the only natural or legitimate form are culturally and historically myopic. While in the US we idolize a family composed of a man who works for pay outside the home and a woman who works inside the home for free – what family historian Stephanie Coontz calls a “male-breadwinner family” – it is not the only form family has ever taken. Indeed, it has never been the dominant form, even in 1950s America, because women of color and poor women have always had to work outside of the home for pay to support their families. Historians, anthropologists, and sociologists like myself understand that families take many forms throughout time and across cultures. To pretend that the heterosexual, dyadic (two-person), monogamous, male breadwinner family is universal shows a significant lack of understanding of the world as a whole.