Polyamorous relationships become more visible

Janica Kaneshiro | The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

LOUISVILLE — Her mother calls him “the man from Kentucky.”

But to Jacque Hanson of Lebanon, Ohio, Jason is more than the boyfriend her mom won’t accept.

He would be her second husband if she could get her way.

“I would marry him today if I could,” Hanson said, adding that she has no intention of leaving her husband, Jim.

Instead, she and Jim have agreed to an open relationship.

Hanson identifies as polyamorous, a brand of consensual non-monogamy — or ethical cheating — in which partners are in more than one committed relationship at once with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

It is difficult to determine the actual number of people in such relationships because of a lack of research, but they are becoming more visible because of the Internet and social media, according to psychologist Meg Manthos, whose clientele is about 30% poly groups.

“Poly relationships have been around for as long as we’ve had documentation,” Manthos said.

And according to a national Avvo.com study from June 2015, about 4% of the U.S. population admits to being in an open relationship, which amounts to about 12.8 million people.

In Louisville, Hanson’s boyfriend Jason and his wife lead a support group of polyamorous couples. The group started five years ago and has grown from four people to between 10 and 25 at each of the monthly meetings, they said. In addition, the Louisville Poly email list which they also run has 420 people on it.

Jason and his wife, who asked that their last names not be used to avoid any social stigma, said they hope more people will come to understand their lifestyle.

“If we would have been having this conversation 10 years ago, I’d be a lot more nervous about having it at all,” Jason said. “But today, it feels like the tide is shifting toward accepting people for who and what they are. I may be grossly naïve but that seems to be where they’re going.”

How it works

Like monogamous relationships, every poly relationship has a different set of rules. And it takes a lot of work to maintain several healthy relationships at once, Jason said.

He said he and his wife have only two rules: safe sex and “don’t be a jerk.” The latter has taken the place of a longer list they made when they first started exploring outside their marriage.

“At first we had a page or two of rules, ‘Not in my bed,’ ‘don’t spend the night anywhere else,’ over time some of those just fell away,” Jason said. “When she had her first relationship outside of me, the rest of them fell away. People get crazy when they get into a new relationship. It’s no different with poly-folk than the starry-eyed lovers on the street.”

Regardless of how many rules they make, sometimes issues do come up, and it can be hard when there are more than two parties who have to come to an agreement, Jason said.

At each meeting of the Louisville poly group, members write questions on notecards, and Jason’s wife moderates the ensuing discussion over lunch. Perennial topics include scheduling, jealousy and public perceptions.

“The problems of coordinating a two-person relationship are difficult enough, but when you add a third, fourth or fifth, then you start getting in to ‘who gets me on my birthday?’ sort of questions,” Jason said. “It can get overwhelming.”

Polyamorists often see themselves as predisposed to their lifestyle, Jason added. He said that when he was 18, he cheated on a girlfriend, which made him realize that monogamy might not work for him.

When he met his wife, he was up front with her about what was going to work best for him.

“I told her I can’t be monogamous,” Jason said. “I can’t do that. I tried, I failed, and I don’t want to do that again. I think there’s a better way we can do this.”

After a few years of marriage, they opened their relationship.

What the experts say

Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington and a relationship expert for PerfectMatch.com, said acceptance of open relationships is based on an “idealized viewpoint” that would be difficult to manage in real life.

“I think many Americans like to think of themselves as liberal and sexually adventurous,” Schwartz said in the 2015 Avvo study. “It might sound sexy to have an open relationship, especially to young people. But the fact is most human beings are territorial they don’t like sharing, and they especially don’t like sharing someone they are in love with.”

Elisabeth Sheff, author of the book The Polyamorists Next Door, said the key to making polyamory work is communication.

She wrote in a Psychology Today story that polyamorous people “put a lot of emphasis on communication as a way to build intimacy, explore boundaries, negotiate agreements, and share feelings.”

To deal with the problem of jealousy, poly couples talk about what might be causing the feeling, and work to reassure their partners, Sheff said.

“They tend to face jealousy more directly,” Sheff said. “The polyamorous tend to view it as a signal that something else is happening. ... If you’re feeling insecure, it’s not beneficial to have your partner stop whatever they’re doing, but to become more secure in yourself.”

Psychologist Manthos said most of the poly couples she counsels have problems similar to monogamous couples she works with, except poly couples tend to have more issues with how they are perceived. Unlike monogamous couples, people who identify as poly have to worry about judgment from their families, teachers and the public, Manthos said.

Websters Dictionary definitions

Open marriage: A marriage in which both people agree to allow each other to have sex with other people.

Polyamory: The state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.

Polygamy: The state or practice of being married to more than one person at the same time.