If you think about your future, love will play an important role. Relationships are “at the core of our wellbeing as humans,” as relationship coach Libby Sinback phrases it. “Love is why we are here and how we heal.” While love is a big part of our lives and future, the future of love itself is not often the focus of thought. What is love? And how can it be lived? Sinback, with her clients and on her podcast, talks about polyamorous relationships, about nonmonogamy. For some, this may come as a surprise. Let’s pause here for a second and ask ourselves, why is that? Monogamy and marriage are now considered the norm. While cheating couples are, sadly, a common and strangely socially accepted phenomenon, many people do not know anyone living in a consensually nonmonogamous relationship. The invisibility of other relationship models leads to the often unhealthy assumption that a monogamous relationship, no matter how dysfunctional or unhappy, is the only way to go – or, in this case, to love.

This is interesting and a little bit hypocritical in a world in which monogamy is actually a minority relationship model. According to BBC reports, cultural estimates suggest that 83% of societies globally allow polygamy. Around the globe, there is a growing community of openly polyamorous (“poly”) people. In Iceland as well as many other countries, people who reject the idea of love and affection being finite and exclusive are coming together and forming communities. Norse mythology is also not a blank slate when it comes to polyamory, featuring the goddess Freyja with her clearly non-monogamous habits.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Freyja#/media/File:Freya.jpg

But what does polyamory really mean? The Cambridge Dictionary defines polyamory as “the practice of having sexual or romantic relationships with two or more people at the same time.” This is rather vague but also shows that there is no one way to be poly. It can mean two people living in an open relationship, explicitly agreeing that each partner may have sexual relationships with others. It can mean a person living in long- or short-term romantic relationships with several people at once. It can mean a triangular relationship. Or couples swinging together. You get the hint. Living poly can be many different things. And most important is not how you label the relationships, but how they work.

What they all have in common is that each is based on consensus, mutual understanding, and trust. Maintaining a polyamorous relationship, in which everyone involved feels accepted, heard, and valued is a lot of emotional work and commitment and requires tons of open communication. Think about the last conflict you had with your partner and how much emotion and energy it took to resolve it. Now imagine three or more people and their needs and feelings being in the mix. If you think about it that way, it is quite ridiculous that polyamory is often labelled as a simple excuse to sleep or “orgy” around. Frankly speaking, there are easier ways to get sex if that is the only thing you want. The social stigma around nonmonogamy is unjustified and actually says more about the instability and judgmental nature of the relationship model we’ve labeled as “normal” than it says about polyamorous love.

Polyamory is a commitment to love on your own terms. To live the feelings and connections you have with the people around you. This is not to say that all relationships should be open. Or that everything but polyamory is not true love. Quite the opposite: Let’s just try and stop seeing (hetero/binary) monogamous relationships and marriages as the normal and only “real” way to be together. Some people live and love differently. That is the beauty of love and, if we are honest with ourselves, should be the most normal thing in the world.

Want to understand polyamory better? Here are some podcast ideas for you:

“Making Polyamory Work” with Libby Sinback

“Multiamory” with Emily, Dedeker & Jase

“Normalizing Non-Monogamy” with Emma & Fin

Love the Way You Want