[English version of Tout le monde devrait être polyamoureux.]
I think that everyone, without exception, should be polyamorous…
I’ll readily admit, this phrasing is provocative, but it is also perfectly exact and I’ll explain how (by “exact”, I don’t mean that I must be right, only that it is really what I think, without exaggeration).
First off, what do I mean by “be polyamorous”?
For me, being polyamourous means “to accept the possibility of multiple affective relationships in parallel, with everyone’s approval“.
Which means that it is about affective relationships, and not only romantic or sexual relationships, because polyamory tends to blur the arbitrary distinctions that we usually draw between different kinds of relationships. Relationships can become more plastic, with an intellectual affinity morphing into a cuddly friendship without sex, with a foremost sexual relationship morphing into a romantic relationship, with an emotional intimacy opening up to a sexual intimacy, etc… Among polyamorous people, it isn’t rare to find relationships that are basically impossible to find within mononormativity, because they share features with the supposedly airtight categories of friendship and romantic love. Few monogamous people would accept that their beloved be in a relationship where they often see movies while cuddling in the arms of somone else (even if it never goes further than that) or where they engage in an explicitly sexual correspondence (even if it never becomes physical). Even within mononormativity, it is established that we can have multiple friendly relationships in parallel, multiple parental relationships in parallel, or multiple professional relationships in parallel. Once the distinction gets blurred, this possibility seems rather obvious for all relationships (to which we frequently get the retort that there’s something different with romantic love, and nobody has ever been able to articulate this supposedly fundamental difference consistently; quite the opposite, when we push people to explain in detail the logic of that idea, we almost always end up with really weird arguments).
These relationships are envisioned with everyone’s approval, meaning in open and honest communication with every person we are in a relationship with. Some say they practice polyamory with everyone’s consent, but I choose to restrict the notion of consent to what happens to oneself; in this sense, I can never not consent to what two other persons are doing together, but it could not have my approval. Depending on polyamorous people, this question of approval has a different scope. For some, it means that their partners can have a say to some degree on what they will do with others. An extreme of that approach is to give veto power to a person, usually within a primary couple. But for others, it is out of the question that a third person could have a say on the relationship between two persons and what receives everyone’s approval are the common rules of polyamory, not the specifics of each relationship. But even in this vision (or, counter-intuitively, even more in this vision?), it is still about actively finding a modus vivendi that best fills everyone’s needs. I share this vision and it just looks more realistic to me: in all relationships, including monogamous relationships, we do things that the other could be tempted to forbid (maybe only out of concern for our safety, like going down stairs with our arms full…). It looks to me that it is unavoidable to deal with the other’s freedom and wishing to control them seems to be the symptom of a deeper problem. To seek an illusion of control is a basic response to fear and we don’t need to have pathological levels of anxiety to reach for that process, it is probably something very frequent for absolutely all human beings.
The problem, in fact, is that mononormativity, as well as other oppressive ways of thinking, teaches us that some fears and some forms of control are not only legitimate, but healthy or even necessary. It is not often openly so, but we learn to build our relationships on defiance and fear. And some of the fears we get taught are based on lies. We get taught to fear our beloved feeling attraction or desire for someone else than us, based on the lie that this is evidence not only that we became less attractive or desirable, but that this will certainly lead to them falling in love. And we get taught to fear our beloved falling in love with someone else, based on the lie that this would mean they stopped loving us and will want to break up.
So what, should everyone have multiple relationships?
No! Because polyamory isn’t defined as being in multiple relationships, but as accepting their possibility! As for myself, I became polyamorous when I had only one romantic relationship and at a time where there was no prospect of having a second one. But the mere fact of becoming polyamorous already changed the way I was considering that relationship (and it couldn’t have continued otherwise!). And when at some point someone has no romantic relationship, they don’t stop being polyamorous. On the other hand, if we stop considering friendship and love as absolutely different, almost everyone is simply in multiple relationships.
When I say that everyone should be polyamorous, it is because I think that nobody can ever benefit from believing the lies that our culture tells us about love (monogamous or not). No, it is definitely false that we cannot truly love more than one person at a time. People cheating on their spouse and not wanting to choose between one or the other beloved have been proof of that for centuries (which doesn’t change how dishonest cheating is). The intense and all-encompassing love we feel for our children and our parents should demontrate to us that love isn’t usually a resource that gets divided between recipients (it is quite the opposite: love multiplies, and loving one person more often amplifies the love for others…). More conclusively, the love lived and professed by the millions of polyamorous people in itself should end that myth. No, it is not intrisincally more difficult to have multiple relationships, or more likely to end up in pain. That last argument should be profoundly ridiculous when it is connected to the statistics of divorce and the usual outcomes of monogamous couples, but it is still made regularly. As for the inherent difficulty, polyamory just makes it an absolute requirement to work on oneself and one’s communication, which was already criticial but overlooked in monogamous relationships, with the disastrous outcomes we know. Polyamorous people are forced to face the fact that they cannot know blindly and without communication where they are going. Monogamous people don’t know either, but the notion that there is a normal way to experience a monogamous couple makes the delusion possible (go on dates, have sex, marry, buy a house, adopt a dog, have 2.3 kids, etc…).
Everyone should be polyamorous because everyone should accept the reality of human nature: it is possible for most human beings to have several romantic relationships, most people don’t need to be jealous ou possessive and we can enjoy to be free and offer people we love the same freedom. We can even experience a great joy in seeing people we love experience joy with other people than us. It is a wonderful feeling that buddhism call “Muditā“ and polyamorous people call compersion. Whether people wish to experience this wonderful reality or not, it exists. And as for any reality, there is nothing to be gained and everything to lose in telling oneself lies about it.
I don’t wish anybody to be monogamous out of the belief that it is the only possibility. Paradoxically, being polyamorous looks like a critical requirement to succeed in a monogamous couple: it is by knowing the actual reality and the alternatives that we can really choose to be exclusive. Forcing ourselves to be exclusive when we don’t really want that actually looks like an excellent way to not protect ourselves from the possibility of cheating in the future. The history of marriage and monogamy over the last centuries seems to rather validate that hypothesis… It’s true about our own choices but also about a person we would become exclusive with: does that person express the desire to be in an exclusive couple because it is their preference, or because they fear the contempt and rejection they would suffer if they were honest about their doubts? And obviously, for the people who would be less happy in a romantic and sexual exclusivity, I wish them to find the conditions where they can live fulfilling multiple relationships.
May God keep you.
Illustration : Diana et Actaeon