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More links from a polyamory point of view: http://padlet.com/fhossmann/POLYjealousy

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Jealous of what? Solving polyamory’s jealousy problem - Salon.com

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Jealous of what? Solving polyamory’s jealousy problem - Salon.com

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The first question people ask my polyamorous family is "How do you handle the jealousy?" Befuddled, we answer, "What jealousy?"

I am lucky; I live with the two loves of my life. I am smitten with my husband of 16 years, and adore my partner of four. The three of us depend upon and nurture each other; we are a family. When my partner and I hadn't had a date in a while, my husband encouraged us to take a holiday at the art museum, knowing how the visual connects us. When my husband and I hit an emotional snag in discussing our issues, my partner helped us to sort it out and come together. And when I was picking out Christmas presents, I gave the foodies in my life some bonding time over a Japanese small plates cooking class.

The existing polyamory advice literature pushes individualistic solutions to jealousy. Polyamory gurus such as Dossie Easton ("The Ethical Slut"), Deborah Anapol ("Love Without Limits") and, more recently, Franklin Veaux ("More Than Two") advocate personal responsibility as the solution to insecurity. You must "work through" your jealousy, making sure to not "control" your partner, all the while viewing the experience of jealousy through a lens of personal growth. My family has never needed to rely on these individualistic methods because jealousy is a social problem, not an individual one, and so are the solutions.

Prescribing of individualistic methods for management of jealousy is nothing new. It can be traced to the decline of the family economy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Peter N. Stearn's "Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion in American History" argues that prior to the 18th century in the U.S. and Europe, jealousy was much less of a problem. Living in close-knit social and economic communities with prescribed roles did not leave room for fears of losing one's significant others to rivals. Husband and wife teams were viewed as units (rather than as two individuals) embedded within a communal structure. Sure, individuals didn't have a whole heck of a lot of autonomy, but they did have the security of knowing their spousal relationship unit was recognized, supported and held accountable to the community.

With the shift from family- and community-based institutions to wage work in urban environments, middle-class families began functioning within spheres separated by gender (with women being relegated to the home). Spouses overlapped less in daily life, which meant less communal support, monitoring and recognition of relationships. It is widely recognized that the emergence of a capitalist economy caused women to lose economic and social power relative to men. But the emergence of separate spheres also deprived both women and men of the communal support for their relationships, which had once made jealousy a non-issue.

The 20th century saw women's reentry into the economic sphere, with increased opportunities for women and men to make individual choices about education and occupation. These welcome economic gains for women were accompanied by the increasingly pesky problem of jealousy. Unlike the family economy where spouses worked within the same community, now partners spent their time in separate, mixed-sex education and work institutions, with increased availability of potential alternative partners. And while the increase in the idea of romantic love during this time period dampened jealousy some, it was a poor substitute for the previous complete communal support for relationships.

So, if green eyes grew out of the shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, what was our newly individualistic, capitalist society to do? Why, call those peepers into insecurity monsters that could be tamed through self-control.

Quick, guess the time period of the following quotes:

1). "Jealousy is an emotion that arises inside you; no person and no behavior can 'make' you jealous. Like it or not, the only person who can make that jealousy hurt less or go away is you."

2). "Jealousy is almost always a mark of immaturity and insecurity. As we grow confident of love and of our loved one, we are not jealous."

3). Jealousy is "undesirable, a festering spot in every personality so affected."

The first is contemporary, taken from the poly bible "The Ethical Slut." The second is from a mainstream 1950s relationship advice manual, and the third is a commentary from Margaret Mead in the 1930s. Note that only the first quote addresses a non-monogamous audience. Polyamory advice on jealousy is not radical when held up to this light; it is simply part of the larger 20th century context of demonizing jealousy and demanding personal responsibility for its eradication. Instead of locating jealousy within the structural changes of the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been an erroneous tendency to look inward for its causes and cures.

I think back on my life of four years ago as we first formed our polyamorous family. My new boyfriend was surprised that he felt no jealousy of my 14-year relationship with my husband. He felt supported and welcomed into our lives, and longed to make a commitment to us, but the absence of jealousy was perplexing to him. Doesn't jealousy naturally emerge from a partner having another partner, he wondered? He waited for over a year before he made a commitment, just in case jealousy would emerge. He was waiting for Godot.

The three of us met at a film club and just seemed to "get" each other instantly. Our small talk consisted of Bourdieu, Navier-Stokes equations, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The fundamental compatibility we had was effortless and we laughed like children together. It was this fundamental understanding of one another that allowed my boyfriend to "see" our marriage in a way that few others could. Having the closeness of our marriage reflected back in such a nuanced and perfect way felt wonderful. Similarly, the depth of my husband's closeness with me allowed him to recognize the rare comfort and feeling of being at home I felt with my boyfriend. My husband provided one of the few sources of support and recognition that my boyfriend and I had at the time for our budding (but at first, secret) relationship. He was also there for us when we first "came out" to confused family and friends. While many expressed worries that this new relationship would lead to destruction, my husband gave us anniversary cards and told us that we were a rare and special couple.

Eric Widmer, a sociologist at the University of Geneva shows that trust in any dyadic (two-person) relationship is influenced by the density of the larger social configuration in which it is embedded. Research indicates that people feel more comfortable when those persons they are close to are also close to one another, which is termed transitivity. This leads over time to dense networks, where the number of actual connections between members comes close to or equals the number of potential connections. In my polyamory family there were three potential dyadic relationships and all have been realized either through a love relationship (my partners and I) or a close friendship (between my partners). A dense, socially cohesive network allows for a greater degree of trust between any two members. My family's wider social network of friends and family varies in its transitivity with us. But the cohesiveness within our immediate family alone begins to account for the seemingly surprising lack of jealousy.

Stephanie Koontz, in an interview for a Salon article, posits that we are unlikely to institutionalize non-monogamy because "we're not the kind of society that has lots of very close, tight-knit relationships with a sense of interdependence that exists across the life cycle." I agree. Our society has been moving away from these sorts of lifetime structures for more than two centuries. Poly families with lifetime commitments like ours, or the one outlined in the Salon article "Polyamory works for us," are unlikely to become the new norm as they don't reflect contemporary social and economic structures particularly well. In a society characterized by individualistic neoliberalism, the best opportunities go to people who can be geographically mobile and are willing to drop long hours into education and personal career. Given this, coordinating two (or more) partners' individual opportunities through lifetime commitments of any sort doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense.

Most of the polyamory advice literature does not advocate for dense interdependent networks over a lifetime anyway. Their brand of polyamory is individual freedom rooted in personal responsibility and self-actualization, which fits much better into our current neoliberal opportunity structure. An interviewee from "The Ethical Slut" says it best:

"My open sexual lifestyle gives me personal freedom, independence and responsibility in a way that being an exclusive couple doesn't. Because I'm responsible, every day, for my needs being met (or not), and for creating and maintaining the relationships in my life, I can take nothing for granted...and so this lifestyle gives me a very concrete feeling of individuality that I re-create every day."

This is "expressive individualism" (à la Bellah's "Habits of the Heart") at its finest. The polyamory advice literature soaks in a sea of middle-class self-actualization, where seekers express their authentic selves through individualized decisions about relationships. Much like the human potential movement of the 1960s, the purpose of relationships in polyamory is to contribute to one's individual self-growth and to allow others the individual freedom to do the same. This individualistic approach to relationships is also "convenient" in that it allows partners to be dispensable if we find better psychological or economic opportunities somewhere else. Polyamory expert Deborah Anapol describes this so called new paradigm as one where the purpose of relationships is to "further the psychological and spiritual development of the partners," which she contrasts with the "old paradigm," which she says "expects family members to replace individual desires with group agendas."

As one polyamory advice website states succinctly, "polyamory encourages, allows, and almost demands that you be an individual first and foremost."

Research on polyamory indicates that participants tend to be highly educated professionals. According to psychologist Hazel Markus, such professionals tend toward an "independent model of agency" where actions are perceived as freely chosen and independent from others (vs. working-class Americans who view their actions as interdependent with others). For instance, in a work organization, upper-middle-class employees tend to have broad networks of colleagues who work closely together but in changing configurations from one project to the next. Without a small, consistent work group, such employees tend to think of themselves as individual agents, with a sense of agency (within organizational constraints) in choosing projects and colleagues. Sounds pretty fantastic, right?

But what happens when we apply this model of independent agency to love relationships? Polyamory both reflects and takes further the application of free-market principles to more and more spheres of our lives. Why not love? Because while shifting colleague networks are one thing, in a love and sex context, those reconfigurations are pretty hard on the heart.

We can learn something about what happens when we apply individualism to emotionally close relationships from communes in the 1960s and 1970s. It turns out that most of these so-called communes weren't exactly "communal." Research by sociologists such as Stephen Vaisey and Rosabeth Moss Kanter indicate that a shared belief in individual freedom is not enough to create a collective identity or a "we feeling." Those communes that stressed a "do your own thing" ethos and failed to create a commitment to something larger than oneself were the ones that changed membership frequently and did not last long.

Similarly, Elisabeth Sheff, author of "The Polyamorists Next Door," finds that current-day polyamory intimate networks tend to change both in relationship forms as well as membership within a few months to several years' time. Such shifts make it more difficult to establish the sorts of dense, interconnected networks that lead to trust between members.

My hypothesis is that the more shifts that occur within a polyamory network, the more jealousy that occurs, which then requires higher degrees of individualistic emotion management. In other words, individual freedom in relationships has an evil twin of individual constraint of emotion.

For those for whom individual freedom in relationships is the highest value, it may be worth the individual jealousy management that results from putting love on the free market. But for those who don't want to be faced head-on with the green-eyed monster, the advice literature is in denial about which approaches to polyamory lead to a higher or lower probability of jealousy. There are no tools provided beyond individual emotion work for how to manage jealousy for those who want a communal, less individualistic approach to polyamory. So, based on sociological principles on how communities function, we can derive at least some initial ideas for social solutions to polyamory's jealousy problem:

First, the more a "we" feeling is created within social networks, the more trust and less jealousy will likely occur between members. This is easiest with a small number of members (let's face it, solidarity is pretty easy with my three-person family), but can be applied to a five-some or even a large social network. One way to promote a sense of something larger than the sum of its parts is through shared values (beyond individualism) or better yet, having a shared goal. Contrast "do your own thing" communes with those that had a shared service goal; the latter were longer lasting with a sense of commitment and trust among its members, for instance see Camphill Village.

Second, we can reduce jealousy by making it everyone's responsibility to support and recognize all existing relationships within the community. Polyamory experts advise a jealous person to turn to his/her partner for reassurance that their relationship is important. But social network research indicates that dyads need support from the networks in which they are embedded; support that shows the relationship is recognized and valued. Polyamory experts say the purpose of meeting your partner's partners is to soothe your own jealousy or to find out if you happen to like the person (once again, the individualistic, what's in it for me?). But from a social standpoint, the purpose of meeting a partner's partner is to make a contribution to reducing jealousy in your community by letting the person know that you recognize and value of the relationship they have with your partner. A sense of security in a relationship is dependent upon the community having the relationship's back, and each person can contribute to that effort, and receive its benefits.

The common denominator is social rather than personal responsibility. Seeing ourselves as part of a larger system (whether of three or 300 people) leads to taking social responsibility for the health of that system. Can we solve polyamory's jealousy problem? Perhaps, perhaps not. But what we can do is stop pretending that we don't know where jealousy comes from.

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Jealous of what? Solving polyamory's jealousy problem

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The first question people ask my polyamorous family is "How do you handle the jealousy?" Befuddled, we answer, "What jealousy?" I am lucky; I live with the two loves of my life. I am smitten with my husband of 16 years, and adore my partner of four.

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Sweet Marie, she loves just me (She also loves Maurice McGhee). No she don't, she loves just me (She also loves Louise Dupree). No she don't, she loves just me (She also loves the willow tree). No she don't, she loves just me!

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Victoria Poly 101: Dealing with jealousy; getting to compersion: discussion notes from Poly 101

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Victoria Poly 101: Dealing with jealousy; getting to compersion: discussion notes from Poly 101

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The last Poly 101 discussion had a record number of people in attendance. To make sure everyone who wanted to had a chance to speak, we broke into four smaller groups after a general discussion about jealousy and compersion. The following are notes from three of the groups. It was a VERY productive session!

****

We spent a lot of time elaborating on a vocabulary to describe the elements surrounding jealousy. This is an outline of that vocabulary and some of the discussion items around combating jealousy. I've added some of my own ideas to complete the notes.

Jealousy and Envy
While jealousy is anxiety over an anticipated loss of something, envy is anxiety over the desire to have something that someone else has. (So we may feel jealous about our partner's relationship with another, and envy about that other's relationship with our partner.)

Trust and Acceptance
Trust with a partner can make a significant impact on whether either party feels jealous. If you feel that you can trust a partner, the risk or feeling of anticipated loss is much less. Trust means that you feel that you can honour each other's agreements, that you will be honest with each other, etc.
Part of the problem with trust is that we feel we can trust someone if they act exactly in accordance with the rules or boundaries that we are comfortable with, or at least have agreed to. A higher ground than trust is acceptance. If we can accept someone for who they are, then we are more resilient (and less inclined to be jealous) at times when he or she cannot be trusted as much. This requires knowing someone very well. For example, accepting a compulsive liar means understanding when they can be trusted and when they can't, and being okay with this. Accepting someone as they are is also an important component of love.

Reassurance, Disclosure and Check-Ins
Offering reassurance to a partner helps to combat jealousy by lessening the threat of a situation that they have no control over. Reassurance includes reminding a partner how you feel about them; or planning a date on the day after a date with someone else.
Disclosure is more proactive than reassurance. Volunteering information helps to remove some of the mystery and anxiety that can develop if a partner begins to make their own assumptions about what may or may not be happening outside of their control.
Check-Ins are periodic communications between partners to confirm feelings, share information, and proactively double-check that assumptions and prior arrangements are still working for both parties. Checking in regularly can help greatly with trust and overcoming jealousy. You can't check in too much.

Other Tools to Combat Jealousy
1) Partners meeting each other. This can result in the lessening of anxiety, removal of assumptions and also genuinely liking the other person, which makes it much easier to wish them and your partner well.
2) Discussing feelings together. By processing feelings as a team, you can become aware of each other's priorities, anxieties, discuss new boundaries, and offer reassurance before feelings get unnecessarily out of hand. This also helps build trust and acceptance.

Processing Alone or Together
Some people prefer to process their feelings alone, for several hours or sometimes days, before discussing them with a partner. They want to keep the processing part private and avoid premature conclusions or the risk of sharing unfinished or uncertain thoughts. Once finished, they want to share their conclusions, needs and wants. Others feel more comfortable sharing their processing, with the advantage that feelings can be dealt with more quickly. This requires a greater amount of trust and a willingness to make mistakes.

Ownership of Jealousy
Jealousy is a feeling that is owned by the one that experiences it. If you are jealous, you cannot blame another for that feeling. You can discuss that person's behaviour, but the feeling remains your own. Just like anger, jealousy can be destructive and it helps to be able to do the inner work so it can be dealt with -- not externalize it or project it. Clarify that jealousy can and should be discussed and shared. Ownership of the emotion doesn't mean keeping it to yourself, but accepting responsibility for it.

Compromise and Negotiation
Compromise is when both parties give something up. This is not always ideal, since it means a loss to both, but in many cases it's not necessary for both to give something up. For example, if I like cheese and you like bananas, mixing them together is a tasteless compromise. But if we have cheese today and banana tomorrow, I have what I want today and you have what you want tomorrow.
One advantage of negotiation in love, when compared to negotiation in most other scenarios, is that, because you love someone, you are willing to encourage them to start the negotiation by expressing ALL of their needs and wants. You actually are interested in trying to meet as many of them as possible.

****
Another group discussed the following ideas:

Not keeping score

Looking for complementary benefits of other relationships

Understanding your own needs and needs of others and that don't always
mesh, and having realistic expectations of needs being met

Communication - OPEN - accepting feelings, clear communication about
boundaries

Not obsessing about future but still processing / not denying worries

Finally, the group I was in had these points to add to the general wisdom of the evening:

A memorable quote from my group in relation to encouraging compersion to blossom: one must "feed a culture of compersion".

This can be done in several ways, but mostly by communicating and reflecting compersion back to your partner on a regular basis by telling them when you feel happy for them or asking for reassurance that they do feel happy for you. Cultivating friendships with partners of partners (metamours) also helps feed compersion. Demystifying sex can also be helpful (because we communicate sexually as well as verbally!).

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Dealing with jealousy; getting to compersion: discussion notes from Poly 101

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The last Poly 101 discussion had a record number of people in attendance. To make sure everyone who wanted to had a chance to speak, we broke into four smaller groups after a general discussion about jealousy and compersion. The following are notes from three of the groups.

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The ONE Thing That Makes Polyamorous Relationships Not Only Work, But Thrive

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How do people make open relationships work? The secret to successful polyamory is compersion, a quality that's described as the opposite of jealousy.

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Planet Waves | A Crazy Little Thing Called... | By Eric Francis

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Planet Waves | A Crazy Little Thing Called... | By Eric Francis

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Planet Waves | A Crazy Little Thing Called... | By Eric Francis

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Jealousy and Compersion with Multiple Partners | Psychology Today

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Jealousy and Compersion with Multiple Partners | Psychology Today

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From The Lives of the Rich and Famous to Real Housewives of Atlanta, mainstream culture in the US is saturated with jealousy. Popular images of romance cast jealousy as an emblem of true love, because someone must really care if they are jealous, right? The flip side of jealousy, compersion or the warm glow of happiness that comes when one's lover is happy with one of their other lovers, is so little know that the polyamorists had to make up a word for it.

The majority of polyamorists (and a significant number of serial monogamists) experience jealousy at some point in their relationships. Polys have four primary responses to jealousy, frequently moving among them and combining them so that they can go from freaking out to introspection, through compersion, and back to freaking out again in the same evening.
Freak Out and Want to Control Others
Often, especially when initially exploring polyamory, people who experience jealousy get extremely upset and feel threatened. This feeling of threat can spur the jealous person to want to control others, which often results in a slew of rules that limit how/when/where/who their partners can see, and what/when/how/where they can do/say/think with other people. The idea behind the rules is usually that, if they can arrange things just right and the rules are followed to the T, then no one will feel jealous because the feelings of jealousy will either go away, or situations will be controlled to the point that they no longer provoke jealousy. Usually that doesn't work, though, and people still experience jealousy, so the rules have to be rewritten to include the new situation that provoked jealousy and new rules about how to interact with others so jealousy will not appear. This strategy often results in an ever-growing list of rules that governs ever-shrinking and circumscribed relationships. Sometimes polys who feel the desire to control others recognize it as a booby trap and talk about it instead of actually trying to do it.
Discussion, Introspection, and Negotiation
Another way people deal with jealousy is to discuss it with their lovers and lover's lovers or paramours (sometimes called other significant others or OSOs). Speaking openly of jealousy can help to defuse the charge around the situation, and partners can respond by offering reassurances of lasting love and demonstrating appreciation. Practiced polyamorists talk about focusing on the emotions that are underlying the jealousy, often insecurity or fear of loss. By facing those fears directly, polys are able to address the issues head on instead of allowing them to run the show from behind the scenes.

Negotiating the situational and practical elements of the relationship can go a long way towards alleviating jealousy: If one partner is constantly staying home with the kids eating macaroni and cheese when the other is out on dates eating steak and dancing until 3am, it is bound to create jealousy and resentment. By making sure that everyone is getting personal time equitably (regardless of if they are dating or not), and equally distributing fun, money, and work, polys can forestall many of the situations that could provoke jealousy before they even become problems, or address them once they have been identified as problematic.
Anticipate and Overcompensate for NRE
New Relationship Energy, or NRE, is the effervescent feeling that accompanies new love. The rush of new love makes everything associated with that person glow with the brilliance of infatuation and the fun of spontaneity. In contrast, long-standing relationships can seem boring or simply get overshadowed by the brilliance of the NRE. Practiced polys take several steps to overcompensate for NRE, such as making sure to spend time and attention on longer-term relationships as well, being aware of and acknowledging the narcotic effects of NRE, and avoiding making any big life decisions when in the grips of NRE.
Compersion
Compersion is the flip side of jealousy, or the glee of seeing one's lover falling in love with someone else. Polys who experience compersion liken it to being happy that their partner got a part in a local theater production or was chosen employee of the month - it does not affect the person directly, but they are still happy to see their partner happy and having good things happen, regardless of the nature of those good things. If something brings joy to your partner, then it makes you happy. Practiced polys act in compersive ways like vacating the large bedroom for their partner to host a visiting lover, taking care of kids so their partners can go on dates, and treating their paramours kindly.

It is important to note that compersion must be authentic to truly work. Feigning compersion with forced cheerfulness in the face of pain will only go so far. Talking about discomfort early and often tends to be a far better strategy than "fake it till you make it," which more often leads to explosion and disaster.
Lack of Jealousy?
A few of the polys in my study reported that not only did they did not feel jealousy, they didn't really even understand it on a visceral level. They generally related their lack of a jealousy response to either never having learned to be jealous as a child, or to being polyamorous by sexual orientation: Either their upbringing did not emphasize jealousy, or they were not "wired" for jealousy or monogamy. In some cases people's assertions that they did not experience jealousy seemed a bit too blithe and smacked of superiority to those jealous monogamists and cheaters. In other cases, however, I witnessed people responding with compersion to situations that could have easily provoked jealousy instead. At one poly campout I attended, a man with several lovers spent the first night in the tent with his wife and then spent every other night with a different woman in a different tent. In a situation that could reasonably provoke jealousy, the woman did not appear jealous at all.

On the last night of the campout I finally asked her how she felt about her husband's absence from their tent. She responded that she was an introvert and liked the space to herself, she got enough attention from him (and others) at different times to meet her needs, and she did not "need to keep him in my back pocket all the time to know he loves me." Importantly, she emphasized the fact that her needs were getting met on the broader level. Because she felt loved, considered, and safe, she could relax and be comfortable with his camp-ground roving. While jealousy was not an issue for the camping woman and some others, in most polyamorous relationships it comes up at least occasionally and people simply learn to deal with it.

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Jealousy and Compersion with Multiple Partners

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Polyamorists often face jealousy and use several strategies to deal with it, such as freaking out and trying to control others, discussing it and facing the underlying fear or insecurity, or feeling compersion-happiness at a lover's happiness with someone else. Some polys say they don't feel jealousy, either because they didn't learn it or they aren't "wired" for it.

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Love Without Limits - Articles - Compersion: Using Jealousy as a Path to Unconditional Love - by Dr. Deborah Anapol

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Love Without Limits - Articles - Compersion: Using Jealousy as a Path to Unconditional Love - by Dr. Deborah Anapol

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Love Without Limits - Articles - Compersion: Using Jealousy as a Path to Unconditional Love - by Dr. Deborah Anapol

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Dr. Deborah Anapol's Love Without Limits website offers workshops, articles, books, and videos on polyamory, sacred sexuality and conscious relationships.

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PolyFamilies:Jealousy and the Poly Family

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PolyFamilies:Jealousy and the Poly Family

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Jealousy and the Poly Family

In trying to avoid actually writing another confounded article on jealousy when the Internet Poly community is already inundated with such material, I find I cannot avoid it after all.

Jealousy, as anyone who has had a problem with it will tell you, stems from a fear of loss. Sexual jealousy is really only possible when one fears the loss of one's love interest. If you've been living awhile in a poly family, you've either gotten over it, learned to deal with it on your own, or your relationship is about to break up.

However, sexual jealousy is hardly the only kind of jealousy any human experiences. One notorious form of jealousy is that a fond parent might feel when that child displays affection to another. One child might be jealous if another child is getting more attention, an artist might feel jealous if another seems to be having a better creative day (whistling innocently)... In fact, the deepest and most burning feeling of jealousy I ever experienced was when I was three years old when my brother was born. I've experienced it since, and I can tell you that nothing has ever come close.

All of these things are not necessarily poly specific, but someone in a poly relationship is in a better position to learn from this -- or doesn't stay poly long.

With this in mind, here are a few things to keep in mind when you find yourself feeling jealous:

Jealousy is not something to be feared.

Any negative emotion is supposed to serve the same function that pain does -- a signal that something needs attention. If you're feeling jealous, celebrate! You have a chance to learn something. And with that attitude, you probably won't feel jealous for long, which is kind of the point.

When you do feel jealous, ask yourself why. What do you fear? What do you hope for? What do you want and why do you want it?

Are the other people in question aware of my feelings?

Okay, in this instance, hinting doesn't count. Have you stated your feelings clearly and blatantly. i.e. "I am feeling jealous of the time you are spending with The Prince because I have had no time to write with him in three weeks."

If you do not feel comfortable stating this blatantly, then why not?

Are you afraid of being brushed aside? Do you feel like your feelings are unreasonable? If so, why? You do kind of have to analyzed this before you can go any further. As someone who dislikes confrontations and has a real fear of being brushed aside, I sympathize greatly with not wanting to speak up. However, bitter experience had taught me that it is important to think about your feelings carefully for a short time, then speak your mind.

As Someone from the PolyFamilies List has often commented, "Own your own shit."

It's important to know what's your problem, and what belongs in someone else's camp. It can be hard to be objective about this, but you do need to try. Your feelings, by the way, are your problem. No, you cannot say that how you feel is someone else's fault. Your thoughts and feelings are your very own. How you react is entirely up to you.

This does not mean I am advising being a doormat. I don't advise it at all. But, you are free to choose reactions that best suit you.

Stating your feelings blatantly does not obligate the other person to act according to your wishes.

Yes, I would rather, when I summon the courage to speak up, have everyone be so impressed that they rush to act upon my wishes.

Not only is the Real World not this way, it does not need to be this way. Communication does not and has never meant, "I've stated a preference. If you love me, you'll immediately and eagerly act on this preference." It does mean that you do have to explain exactly how important X issue is to you.

You could rate each desire on a scale of one to ten. One for me would be complete indifference on the subject. Ten would be "If I don't get this in a relationship, I cannot continue the relationship." If you have more than a few tens, you're probably assigning too high a want level to many things and are either getting ulcers or spend a lot of time in tears.

Be careful when using words like "need".

When your mind hears the word "need", it translates to the body, "If we don't get this, we're going to die." You don't need to have sex, get every Thursday with a lover, a career in computers, or that pair of Doc Marten's. You need air. You need enough food to keep you alive. You need enough warmth to keep you from freezing to death.

You might want something pretty badly. I really, really, really, really want happiness, health and growth for and from my family. I don't need to have it. So why am I lecturing about this in an article on coping with sexual jealousy? Simple. Remember when I said jealousy is fear of loss or not having enough? Being very careful how you talk to yourself about needs is a good way to reduce that fear.

Jealousy, I think, gets far more attention that it deserves in dealing with poly. Yeah, it happens. Yeah, it's something that requires attention. But, it's not something that requires the fear and trembling treatment. It happens, you deal in the best way you know how and you move on.

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PolyFamilies:Jealousy and the Poly Family

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Home The Polyamorous Misanthrope Emotional Issues Practical Issues Just for Fun Site Map Contact Us PolyFamilies Chat What is Polyamory? Recommended Reading RSS Feeds Poly Meetings! Featuring Spice! -- The PolyFamily Web Comic In trying to avoid actually writing another confounded article on jealousy when the Internet Poly community is already inundated with such material, I find I cannot avoid it after all.

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Jealousy and Abandonment Issues in Polyamory | The Polyamorous Misanthrope

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Jealousy and Abandonment Issues in Polyamory | The Polyamorous Misanthrope

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Mike wrote in to ask:
I've been in an open relationship for almost two years now. We're very much in love and have, generally, good and open communication. I have been monogamous but philosophically open to poly before I met my current partner. She and I have worked through a lot of my jealousy to the point where I can be okay with her going out on dates or having sex with other people. But I still get a very strong and visceral reaction when she first tells me about the possibility of that happening - to the point where I sometimes get very upset, worried I can't handle the relationship, and get panicked. However, as time goes on, I find that I can manage it. I wonder if and when this reaction will subside. Also, we don't have anything in the relationship like veto power or prior approval or anything, just a general "keep me informed" guideline. I wonder if having more explicit guidelines might help, although I certainly don't want to rely on them (nor abuse veto power to avoid working through my own emotions). Does this pattern mean I'm not cut out for polyamory? Or am I being too hard on myself? (I have a history of my family evoking strong feelings of abandonment in me, so I'm suspicious this is related.)

Insecurity issues are not unusual in polyamory. Well, let's be a bit more honest. Insecurity issues are not unusual in human beings! While I'd be the last person on Earth to say you should make yourself miserable to be poly, you're not coming across as necessarily miserable, but concerned about emotional reactions. The fact that you're saying that as time goes on, you can manage your reaction says to me that you are dealing with what I call "Lizard Brain" stuff.

You're not coming across as someone who needs more than a "just keep me informed" guideline, either. How I'm seeing it, and I'm working from about 200 words of text in explanation, is that you have a History and you're reacting to that as much as you're reacting to your present situation. Hey, welcome to the Human Club. People do that.

You might want to try asking yourself some questions.
Am I reacting to real, verifiable actions, or am I making up Worst Case Scenarios?

This is probably the biggest issue you need to look at. We often feel anxiety when we play the "Make it worse" game unconsciously. i.e. "My partner will like that other person better and will leave me and take all my money and shame me publicly and make it difficult for me to get another job and I'll freeze to death alone under a bridge drinking sterno and being spit on by passers-by."

In reality? Chances are slim anything will be that bad. In reality your partner loves you, right? If you're worried about that, there are some questions to ask there, too! Yes, yes, yes, people do get hurt in relationships sometimes. It sucks when it happens, but it's utterly survivable, no matter what romantic fiction and movies try to say.
Does my partner tell me the truth?

This is the biggie. If you ask a question, will your partner tell the truth? If you ask, "Do you want to stay with me?" and your partner is habitually truthful with you, then when your partner says, "Yes, I want to stay with you," you're all good. Problem solved. You just need to trust that. Remind yourself as often as necessary that your partner is trustworthy.

If your partner doesn't tell you the truth, you have a different problem, mind. If there are gross differences between behavior and words, explore that, and do ask questions. Notice I say, "Ask questions" rather than "Accuse" or "Interrogate" or any other of a number of similar words. I mean "ask" because it's okay to presume a miscommunication at first. It's when there is the constant repetition of inconsistencies that you might have an issue. If you genuinely can't resolve that, you probably need not to be in a relationship with that particular person.

For my own part, I think one thing that's very useful to work on is not only feeling secure in a relationship, but whether or not a relationship exists at all. This is not to say that you shouldn't care. Losing someone you love does hurt and it does suck. But cultivating the idea that you can have a good and happy life whether or not you have that specific relationship is actually really helpful to having good and happy relationships, as it removes a lot of anxiety and need.

You ask if you're cut out for polyamory. I don't know that that's the real question you need to ask. I think the real question is, "Am I happy in polyamorous relationships?" That may take some soul-searching, but it's the important answer, and it's really individual. You might say, "Given my druthers, not really. But in this situation, I'm so happy with my partner that it's a small thing to agree to." You might say, "Yeah, I really prefer polyamory. Not only am I using this as a tool to get over insecurity, I'm just plain happier and more relaxed in more open situations. I like the other relationships I personally have and look forward to the challenge of dealing with my lizard brain."

I hope this is helpful and that you find your relationships happy and fulfilling.

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Jealousy and Abandonment Issues in Polyamory

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Mike wrote in to ask: I've been in an open relationship for almost two years now. We're very much in love and have, generally, good and open communication. I have been monogamous but philosophically open to poly before I met my current partner.

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Poly Basics: Jealousy and Poly Relationships | The Radical Poly Agenda

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Poly Basics: Jealousy and Poly Relationships | The Radical Poly Agenda

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Polyamory and Jealousy – 4 Steps to Building a Healthy Relationship | Grace Walcott

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Polyamory and Jealousy – 4 Steps to Building a Healthy Relationship | Grace Walcott

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Dealing with jealousy in a polyamorous relationship.

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Dealing with jealousy in a polyamorous relationship.

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It's hard to talk about polyamory without getting flooded by emails and comments asking how I deal with all the jealousy that must surely come with even the thought of a person I love sleeping swapping spit with someone else. So I reached back into the vault and hauled out my post on jealousy. Enjoy. 🙂

When I talk about polyamory there is a particular sentiment that always comes up: "I couldn't do that, I'd be too jealous."

And I'm happy for those people. "To thine own self be true" was one of the most potent droplets of wisdom in the ocean of Shakespeare's work. Acknowledging that jealousy is present and accounting for that fact by avoiding situations where it would drive you mad is a very smart thing to do. However, when I go on to say that jealousy is a worthless emotion that is only destructive, many of those same people will object. That's where I think they're wrong.

The first objection is usually that our tendency toward jealousy is natural. While this is true, I can't help but think...so what? Our compulsion to overeat (or to eat junk food) is also natural, but who in their right mind would argue that we should indulge it for that reason? Acknowledge its presence, sure, but we all know we should fight that natural tendency if we're to be happy.

Then again, if we could choose our emotions, we'd all just choose to be happy instead of going out and actively doing things to make ourselves happy. Even if we acknowledge that jealousy is bad for us, we can't just will jealousy away, just like we can't just will ourselves to be happy. However, we can change the way we look at things, which can change the way we feel about them. For instance, praying once made me phenomenally happy when I believed in god. Now that I know god doesn't exist, praying makes me feel lousy for wasting my time.

So, in the pursuit of examining our situation (admittedly with the hope of changing how you look at it), let's ask what makes us jealous with someone we love? It can't be that we don't want them to be happy, since we spend a lot of time in our relationships thinking of ways to make our partner happy. But it may very well be that we don't want our partner to be happy in that particular way. Why? We have no issue with our partner being happy with others, or even with other men/women. So what is it about them being happy in that particular way? Are we afraid we'll lose them? Are we afraid they will love someone more?

Let's look at the first concern, that you'll lose your partner if they love or become physical with someone else, and let's clear one thing up: wanting to have sex with someone else does not mean that somebody does not love you and/or does not want to have sex with you. There are certain qualities that your partner finds attractive, and other people on this planet are going to have them besides you (otherwise the porn industry would be broke). People find many members of the opposite sex attractive for a variety of reasons. If you're jealous because you're afraid of losing someone you love, ask yourself how much jealousy helps you accomplish that. If your partner wants to sexually be with another man/woman, do you think that desire will evaporate because a rule has been put in place to give your jealousy priority over your partner's desires? It just means she won't indulge it for fear of losing you. Why is that a win for either of you?

And if your partner wants to explore other relationships to the exclusion of the one she's in with you, why would you want to maintain that relationship anyway? Why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you? As Christopher said:

If your partner wanted to explore other relationships because they didn't want you anymore, though, then the relationship is already over. I, for one, don't want a relationship, even (especially) a marriage, where my partner stays with me because her exposure to other people's minds and bodies is being arbitrarily limited. It's exactly because my marriage is romantically and sexually open that I know that my wife genuinely wants to be with me.

So jealousy will not keep someone with you, not in any meaningful way. What it can do is drive them away from you. If a person wishes to be with others in some way, whether it's sexually or whether it's just hanging out with their guy/girl friends and you forbid it, it may very well create resentment. And I don't think it can be argued that resentment is an effective way to keep someone enamored with you. What can keep someone with you in a meaningful way (as I would argue, the only meaningful way) is their own choice. But they must be free to make it. If you insist that your partner is making that choice of their own volition, then why the constraints of monogamous rules?

I am not against monogamy, I simply think obligatory monogamy makes no sense (unless your goal is to assuage your own fears of loss). If a person forgoes possible happiness because I'll be hurt if they're happy that way, I'd feel like I was holding them hostage. If someone has the whole world to choose from, without the weight of guilt or their partner's jealousy bearing down on them, and they still choose you...that's beautiful! If they honestly don't want to be with anybody else, more power to them! So elective monogamy is fantastic in my eyes. To me, it's love in its purest form.

But is it possible they'll love someone more? Well, maybe. But why does that matter? Since when is love a competition? If you have a second child, is it a matter of which child you love more? Of course not: you love them both. Time is a finite resource, love is not. Yes, it would mean your partner is spending time with someone else, but as long as they were hanging out with friends beforehand, they were already doing that, and nobody finds it unreasonable for their partner to have their own time with friends (if someone does take issue with that, they're generally viewed as possessive). You could even spend time together with your partner and someone else they love. It can be a very enjoyable time (as long as jealousy doesn't gum up the works and rob you of what could be a lot of fun).

Love is a tricky word. It will mean something different when I say it than when you say it. It seems to me that if you were to unpack the word "love" the way a lot of people use it you would find a lot of qualities that, without their Trojan horse, are obviously qualities people don't pursue by themselves. These are things like obligation (in the sense of feeling like you own another person's actions), jealousy, guilt, etc. They are the enemies of happiness, but somewhere along the line movies and other societal factors convinced a lot of us that love isn't love without them. That's a damn shame, because I think they cheapen the concept. If you love someone, I cannot think of a more noble definition of that word other than this: you want the person you love to be happy, no matter what, no matter who it is with. That, to me, is the most care you can demonstrate for another person. It's also the most selfless.

Ultimately, I find that supporting someone in exploring their desires is the most likely way to produce gratitude in another human being. Finding happiness when they are happy in every way makes me feel as though I'm caring for them without the pollution of self-interest. In my eyes, giving power to jealousy means giving power to my insecurities, and it means placing my insecurities higher than the desires of someone I love in terms of importance.

I've never seen anything but bad happen when I do that.

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Dealing with jealousy in a polyamorous relationship.

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It's hard to talk about polyamory without getting flooded by emails and comments asking how I deal with all the jealousy that must surely come with even the thought of a person I love sleeping swapping spit with someone else. So I reached back into the vault and hauled out my post on jealousy.

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Polyamory without Tears | Psychology Today

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Polyamory without Tears | Psychology Today

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Multiple Lovers, Without Jealousy - The Atlantic

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Multiple Lovers, Without Jealousy - The Atlantic

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Polyamorous people still face plenty of stigmas, but some studies suggest they handle certain relationship challenges better than monogamous people do.

Jackie Lay

When I met Jonica Hunter, Sarah Taub, and Michael Rios on a typical weekday afternoon in their tidy duplex in Northern Virginia, a very small part of me worried they might try to convert me.

All three live there together, but they aren't roommates-they're lovers.

Or rather, Jonica and Michael are. And Sarah and Michael are. And so are Sarah and whomever she happens to bring home some weekends. And Michael and whomever he might be courting. They're polyamorous.

Michael is 65, and he has a chinstrap beard that makes him look like he just walked off an Amish homestead. Jonica is 27, with close-cropped hair, a pointed chin, and a quiet air. Sarah is 46 and has an Earth Motherly demeanor that put me at relative ease.

Together, they form a polyamorous "triad"- one of the many formations that's possible in this jellyfish of a sexual preference. "There's no one way to do polyamory" is a common refrain in "the community." Polyamory-which literally means "many loves"-can involve any number of people, either cohabiting or not, sometimes all having sex with each other, and sometimes just in couples within the larger group.

Sarah and Michael met 15 years ago when they were both folk singers and active in the polyamorous community. Both of them say they knew from a young age that there was something different about their sexuality. "Growing up, I never understood why loving someone meant putting restrictions on relationships," Michael said.

"What I love about polyamory is that everything is up for modification," Sarah says. "There are no 'shoulds.' You don't have to draw a line between who is a lover and who is a friend. It's about what is the path of my heart in this moment."

They've been "nesting partners" for 12 years, but they've both had other relationships throughout that time. Jonica moved in three years ago after meeting Michael on OkCupid. She describes the arrangement's appeal as "more intimacy, less rules. I don't have to limit my relationship with other partners."

The house is, as they describe, an "intentional community"-a type of resource-sharing collectivist household. They each have their own room and own bed. Sarah is a night owl, so she and Michael spend time together alone late at night. Jonica sees him alone in the early morning. They all hang out together throughout the day. The house occasionally plays host to a rotating cast of outside characters, as well-be they friends of the triad or potential love interests.

The triad works together, too, running a consulting nonprofit that puts on events "that teach skills for living together peacefully, such as clear communication, boundaries, what to do when you get upset," Sarah said. An added bonus of the living arrangement is that it cuts down on commuting time.

I initially expected the polyamorous people I met to tell me that there were times their relationships made them sick with envy. After all, how could someone listen to his significant other's stories of tragedy and conquest in the dating world, as Michael regularly does for Sarah, and not feel possessive? But it became clear to me that for "polys," as they're sometimes known, jealousy is more of an internal, negligible feeling than a partner-induced, important one. To them, it's more like a passing head cold than a tumor spreading through the relationship.

Of the three people living in the Northern Virginia duplex, Sarah volunteers that she's the one most prone to jealousy. "It can be about feeling like you're not special, or feeling like this thing belonged to me and now someone's taken it."

She said it was rough for her when Jonica first moved in. Sarah had been accustomed to seeing Michael whenever she wanted, but she started to feel a pang when he spent time with Jonica.

"At first I thought, 'Is something bad happening, something I don't want to support?" she said. "No, I want to support Michael and Jonica in being together. From there, I look at my own reaction. I can be an anxious person, so maybe I was feeling anxious. I find other ways of getting grounded. I might go for a walk or play guitar.

"It's part of learning a healthy self-awareness and the ability to self-soothe," she added. "I notice what I'm feeling, and do a dive inward."

Two-person marriage, be it gay or straight, is still such the norm that even the most progressive among us do a double-take when someone says they like their relationships a little more populous. (This stigma is also why, with the exception of the Northern Virginia triad, all of the other polyamorous sources in this article asked to go either by their first names or pseudonyms).

Increasingly, polyamorous people-not to be confused with the prairie-dress-clad fundamentalist polygamists-are all around us. By some estimates, there are now roughly a half-million polyamorous relationships in the U.S., though underreporting is common. Some sex researchers put the number even higher, at 4 to 5 percent of all adults, or 10 to 12 million people. More often than not, they're just office workers who find standard picket-fence partnerships dull. Or, like Sarah, they're bisexuals trying to fulfill both halves of their sexual identities. Or they're long-term couples who don't happen to think sexual exclusivity is the key to intimacy.

Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist who interviewed 40 polyamorous people over the course of several years for her recent book, The Polyamorists Next Door, says that polyamorous configurations with more than three people tend to be rarer and have more turnover. "Polys" are more likely to be liberal and educated, she said, and in the rare cases that they do practice religion, it's usually paganism or Unitarian Universalism.

Polys differentiate themselves from swingers because they are emotionally, not just sexually, involved with the other partners they date. And polyamorous arrangements are not quite the same as "open relationships" because in polyamory, the third or fourth or fifth partner is just as integral to the relationship as the first two are.

Polyamory overlaps somewhat with geek culture, such as cosplay, or the kink world, such as BDSM. Many couples who become interested in polyamory start by looking for a single, bisexual woman to add to the relationship. In fact, this quest has become so common (and its object has remained so elusive) that it's known as "hunting the unicorn."

But Sheff cautions that once said unicorn is caught, "the men are sometimes not as well-tended as they hoped to be. During the actual sex, the women get interested in each other, and the men describe it as 'not all that.'"

Even many devout monogamists admit that it can be hard for one partner to supply the full smorgasbord of the other's sexual and emotional needs. When critics decry polys as escapists who have simply "gotten bored" in traditional relationships, polys counter that the more people they can draw close to them, the more self-actualized they can be.

In the course of her research, Sheff met one couple in which the man was as "as kinky as a cheap garden hose." "It didn't do it for [his wife], the whole kink thing," Sheff told me. "So he started going to local [BDSM] dungeons and playing with other women. She was not that into that, either. She loved the theater, but she stopped going as much because he thought it was boring and stupid and expensive."

So the couple went poly: "He started dating kinky women. She ended up hooking up with her old high school friend she found on Facebook, and they enjoyed the theater together. And she ended up enjoying time with her husband but not feeling so much pressure about the kinky sex."

I asked the logical, mono-normative question: Why didn't the wife just ditch the garden hose for the theater man? "She gets stuff from the garden-hose guy that she doesn't get from the intellectual guy," Sheff explained. "They do fun things together, and the theater guy is too needy for her. She doesn't want him all to herself, because he would be too much work."

When I went to visit polyamorists in Baltimore, I brought my 6-foot-3 boyfriend with me. The organizer of the local social group BmorePoly, a middle-aged software engineer named Barry, opened the door and said, "Is that your bodyguard?"

I laughed a little too loud.

(We're not polyamorous, by the way. I feel the need to clarify that, as did the scientists I spoke with who study polyamory. One such professor told me that when she describes her research to her peers at academic conferences, they often ask her if she herself is in an open relationship. "Would you ask a cancer researcher if they had cancer?" she told me recently.)

One of the Baltimore couples, Josh and Cassie, represents a typical approach to polyamory: They met a decade ago through a mutual friend, and they dated monogamously for several years before Cassie, who is bisexual, raised the idea of adding another woman to the relationship. They've since had several committed triad relationships lasting from a few months to several years. The "other woman" becomes a full partner in the relationship, and ideally, she complements them both in some way. Cassie always hopes that it'll be a fellow horror-movie lover, while Josh keeps his fingers crossed for an anime fanatic.

"She can go running at 5 a.m. with him," Cassie said. "I'm fine sleeping in."

The only restrictions are that Josh and Cassie spend their wedding anniversary alone together, and that all parties undergo a full STD check before any kind of "fluid bonding" takes place.

Expanding the group beyond three people hasn't been an option so far, Josh says. "When we date together, it's a closed group," Josh said. "That's what works best for us in terms of time and energy. I have a very demanding job."

When monogamous people discover that Josh and Cassie are involved with a third partner, they ask questions that suggest it's just a fling. "Like, 'How far is this gonna go or how long will you be with them?'" Cassie recalls. The answer she gives: "We let it have a natural growth, like any other relationship."

Another Baltimore couple, Erin and Bill, has so far mostly had shorter-term triad arrangements. When Erin and Bill met in the summer of 2012, Bill confessed that he had always fantasized about having sex with a woman and another man at the same time. "I'm heteroflexible," Bill said. "It's like saying you're mostly straight. You're like 70-30."

As it turns out, Erin's fantasy was to have sex with two men at the same time.

When Erin and Bill meet a man they like, all three go out together, with the two men sitting on either side of Erin and holding one of each of her hands.

Bill says watching his wife have sex with another man is anything but unsettling. Instead, it sometimes induces compersion -the poly principle of basking in the joy of a partner's success in romance, just as you would with his or her success in work or sports.

"There are so many societal norms that say, 'He looked the wrong way at someone so I'm gonna go all Carrie Underwood on his vehicle,'" Erin said. "Polyamory is about the idea that having their undivided attention isn't the end all, be all."

Though some ancient civilizations permitted polygamy, or multiple wives, the idea of monogamous marriage has been deeply rooted in Western society since the time of the Ancient Greeks. (Although monogamous Hellenic men were free to have their way with their male and female slaves.)

Monogamy quickly became the norm-and social norms influence our psychology. The process of adhering to social rules and punishing rule violators tickles the reward circuits of our brains. Some studies suggest that each time you think to yourself that polyamory is icky, an oxytocin molecule gets its wings.

In its history, America saw only a handful of collective dalliances away from two-person marriage model. In the 1840s in upstate New York, the Oneida commune practiced "complex marriage," in which the 300 members were encouraged to have consensual intercourse with whomever they desired. As its leader, the lawyer John Humphrey Noyes, put it in his proposal letter to his wife, Harriet: "I desire and expect my [wife] will love all who love God ... with a warmth and strength of affection which is unknown to earthly lovers, and as free as if she stood in no particular connection with me. In fact the object of my connection with her will not be to monopolize and enslave her heart or my own, but to enlarge and establish both in the free fellowship of God's universal family."

By some accounts, the Oneida way of life was far more feminist than traditional marriage was at the time: The women only had sex when they wanted to, for example, and some of the female members relished having multiple sex partners.

But this was no erotic utopia. The commune's elderly true believers regularly initiated its less-experienced teenagers into sex in order to strengthen the younger generation's devotion to Noyes. Members were publicly chastised if they were discovered carrying on exclusive relationships. People who wanted to be parents were matched in arranged marriages and prevented from bonding with their children, all as part of Noyes' plan to create a superior uber-race. In 1879, Noyes, fearing arrest for statutory rape, fled the country and wrote to his to his followers that they should abandon complex marriage. The 70 remaining commune members entered traditional marriages with whomever they happened to be living with at the time.

From there, "free love" experiments largely became the private domain of lefty academics, anarchists, and artists. London's "Bloomsbury Set," for example, was famously a jungle gym of affairs and attractions.

The practice of "swinging" first became common among American military members during World War II, with the tacit understanding that the wives of the men who did not survive would be taken in by those who did. Group marriage saw a limited rebirth in the communes of the 1960s, and open relationships, too, had a heyday in the permissive 1970s. The specter of AIDS put a damper on the free-love movement in the '80s and early '90s, but when the Internet came along, the poly-inclined found new and improved ways to connect with one another.

When Sarah Taub was a teenager in the 1980s, "if I wanted to look for anything about open relationships, there was some science fiction. There was no one you could talk to about it. I felt like I was crazy or that there was something wrong with me."

In her youth, she entered a sexless monogamous relationship that puttered along for a few years before she discovered the poly world. "These days, someone wanting to be poly can easily find a huge group on the Internet," she said. "Poly people are very happy and communicative-there is huge support now that there never was before."

In 1990, Morning Glory Zell, the High Priestess of the Oregon-based pagan Church of All Worlds, wrote an article called "A Bouquet of Lovers," which laid out a vision for transparent, consensual open relationships. Some think it was one of the first modern uses of the word "polyamorous."

"I feel that this whole polyamorous lifestyle is the avante garde of the 21st century," Zell wrote. "Polyamorous extended relationships mimic the old multi-generational families before the Industrial Revolution, but they are better because the ties are voluntary and are, by necessity, rooted in honesty, fairness, friendship and mutual interests. Eros is, after all, the primary force that binds the universe together." Zell died-or rather, " crossed the veil into the Summerlands "-in May of this year, but her legacy lives on.

Despite lingering disapproval, there's some evidence that Americans are growing increasingly accepting of open relationships. To be sure, the sanctity of two-person marriage still looms large: For decades now, most Americans- 90 percent, give or take-have told Gallup that having an affair is unacceptable. In a 1975 survey conducted in a Midwestern town, only 7 percent of the residents said they would ever participate in mate-swapping. Only 2 percent said they ever had. As recently as 2005, college women ranked open marriage as one of the least desirable partnership options: 95 percent of one study' s participants said "One man married to two or more wives" was the one of the most undesirable forms of marriage, while 91 percent said "group marriage" was.

However, an April study asked 1,280 heterosexuals how willing they would be, on a scale from one to seven, to commit various non-monogamous acts, such as swinging or adding a third party to the relationship. Depending on the scenario, up to 16 percent of women and up to 31 percent of men chose a four or higher on the scale when asked whether they'd willing, while still with their partners, to do things like have a third person join the relationship, or have "casual sex with whomever, no questions asked."

Polyamory might seem like the bailiwick of the young and carefree, but many of its practitioners have children. The idea of parents having live-in third, fourth, or fifth partners isn't frowned upon.

Bill and Erin don't hide their outside relationships from Erin's 17-year-old daughter. One day, the couple was watching the television show Sister Wives, which documents a polygamous family in Utah, when the daughter remarked that it was an interesting system.

"She was talking about Sister Wives, and I said, 'What about brother husbands?'" Bill asked her. "I said, 'Your mom and I date a guy.' And she was like, 'Cool.'"

Sheff said that most polyamorous parents date outside the home, much like divorced parents do. And how much they share with their children depends on their ages-a 4-year-old doesn't need to know as much as a 14-year-old does. "It's much more like, 'This is a friend,' not 'This is your new dad of the month,'" she said.

Cassie and Josh said their son, who is now 10, has grown up around his parents' girlfriends, so he doesn't find it unusual. He calls the women the couple dates "Ms. 'Anne,'" and refers to them as "my dad's [or sometimes mom's] girlfriend" to others.

"We have friends who are poly, mono, gay, and lesbian," Cassie said. "He doesn't understand why people have a problem with people caring for and loving each other."

Some marriage experts don't agree that polyamory's impact on children is neutral, though. "We know that kids thrive on stable routines with stable caregivers," said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist and the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Polyamory can be like a "marriage-go-round," Wilcox said. "When kids are exposed to a revolving carousel of spouses, that experience of instability and transition can be traumatic." (Wilcox, who has contributed to The Atlantic, is known for having rather conservative views: He recently penned a Washington Post op-ed about how marriage ostensibly protects women, and he consulted on a much-contested study about the children of same-sex couples.)

Wilcox also assumes that polyamorous people must struggle to devote enough time and attention to each partner and child. "It's a challenge for me as a husband and father to give my wife and kids enough attention," Wilcox said. "I can't imagine how challenging it would be to add another partner. There are limits to time and space."

There's some evidence that polygamy, in particular, can be harmful, not only to children but to women and men. The anthropologist Joseph Henrich has found that the world's polygamous societies gradually evolved toward monogamous marriage because doing so resolved many of the problems created when powerful men hoarded all the wives for themselves. Meanwhile, these societies' mobs of horny, angry, low-status single men would lead to "significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud," as Henrich and fellow researchers wrote in a recent study.

By easing the competition to scoop up as many wives as possible, monogamy allows men to instead focus on things like child-rearing, long-term planning, and saving money. It also increases the age at first marriage and lowers fertility rates, Henrich found. He suggests that's one reason polygamy was outlawed in Japan in 1880, in 1953 in China, and in 1955 in India, for most religious groups. But the welfare of children living in today's polyamorous households won't be knowable until there are more long-term studies on that (tiny) cohort.

In fact, there's a paucity of any sort of research on consensual, Western non-monogamy. A 2005 study that examined 69 polygamous families found that there often was a "deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their mutual husband." Conflict between the co-wives, the researchers wrote, is "pervasive and often marked by physical or verbal violence." But that analysis was based on predominantly African cultures where men take several wives, not the more egalitarian polyamorous community in the developed world.

The nascent research that does exist suggests these modern polyamorous relationships can be just as functional-and sometimes even more so-than traditional monogamous pairings.

Perhaps most obviously, people who have permission to "cheat"-that is, through a planned, non-monogamous arrangement- are more likely to use condoms and have frequent STI tests than clandestine cheaters are. Apparently, sneaking around is already so morally torturous that a stop at Walgreens for Trojans would simply be too much to handle.

Terri Conley, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Michigan who studies polyamory, has analyzed a sample of 1,700 monogamous individuals, 150 swingers, 170 people in open relationships, and 300 polyamorous individuals for a forthcoming study. She said that while people in "open relationships" tend to have lower sexual satisfaction than their monogamous peers, people who described themselves as "polyamorous" tended to have equal or higher levels of sexual satisfaction.

What's more, polyamorous people don't seem to be plagued by monogamous-style romantic envy. Bjarne Holmes, a psychologist at Champlain College in Vermont has found that polyamorous people tend to experience less overall jealousy, even in situations that would drive monogamous couples to Othello-levels of suspicion. "It turns out that, hey, people are not reacting with jealousy when their partner is flirting with someone else," Holmes told LiveScience.

Sheff agreed. "I would say they have lower-than-average jealousy," she said. "People who are very jealous generally don't do polyamory at all."

Conley found that jealousy is "much higher" among monogamous pairs than non-monogamous ones. Polyamorous people also seemed to trust each other more. "For a long time I've been interested in whether monogamous relationships are all they're cracked up to be," Conley said.

Her findings, like Holmes' and Sheff's, are preliminary and limited. But if they hold up, it could mean that at least in some ways, polyamory is a more humane way to love.

Then again, most people aren't biologically predisposed to share their lovers. With limited resources, the only way for our caveman forbears to be sure they weren't raising someone else's children was to ensure their cave-ladies never strayed.

"The men who were happy to have their partner have sex with other men were not our ancestors, because they were more likely to be raising offspring that were not their own," Todd K. Shackelford, an evolutionary psychologist at Oakland University, told me. "They did not pass on the genes that built their greater liberalness."

Although women did not face the risk of accidentally raising a rival's offspring, they similarly had to sweat over whether their partners were cheating-and thus wasting their time and efforts on another woman's children.

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These divergent infidelity anxieties, Shackelford says, forged the differences in how modern men and women experience relational jealousy today. Women get more upset about emotional unfaithfulness, while men are more concerned with sexual cheating.

"There's a phenomenon within psychology called obsessional review, which refers to the kinds of questions that the partner that finds out about the infidelity asks the unfaithful partner," Shackelford said. "Men ask, 'Did you have sex with him? How many orgasms did you have?' etc. Women ask, 'Are you in love with her? Did you buy her gifts? Did you take her to our restaurant?' and so on."

Beyond the broad strokes of gender, individual differences further shape our jealous reactions. In a 2005 study, Shackelford found that men who had previous long-term relationship experience were more jealous in their current romances.

Modern forms of dating also have the potential to foment jealousy to a greater degree than the steadier, simpler courtships of yore. We're no longer settling down with our high-school sweethearts: In 1970, the average first-time bride was 21; today, she's 26. And women now have sex for the first time nearly 10 years before they give birth for the first time. In 1945, that span was only four years.

Later marrying and child-rearing ages have opened up a bevy of potential mate options at work, among friends, and online. But with great choice often comes great envy. "What's the new sexual etiquette for the way people flow into relationships over the course of a longer adulthood?" asked Virginia Rutter, professor of Sociology at Framingham State University. "And how does a lifetime of having opposite-sex close relationships affect the boundaries around heterosexual relationships?"

Social media tends to pump steroids into existing romantic discontent. Tara Marshall, a psychology professor at Brunel University in London, has found that people who are naturally anxious tend to stalk their partners on Facebook, scouring their partners' digital footprints for hints of dishonesty. Through the filter of jealousy, even the most neutral, sideways-hugging photos might be interpreted as threatening.

And there's something uniquely crazy-making about online dating-the way these arranged romances lurch from "just sex" to "getting serious" and back again, unpredictably fizzling or heating up, depending on who's available.

According to Jennifer Theiss, a communications professor at Rutgers University who studies relationships, uncertainty over the status of a romantic relationship tends to increase angst-as does transitioning from casual dating to a more committed state. There's nothing longer than the pause after one partner asks, "Where are we?"

"That's when people have uncertainty over how the partner feels about them-they're having a hard time reading their partner," Theiss told me. "At any other time, the fact that X commented on a Facebook post wouldn't bother me, but today you didn't kiss me before work, so now when I see that X commented, I'm much more sensitive."

When a couple meets online, there's little to stop one party from keeping her online options open-and her profile up to date. In that way, it can be a sort of involuntary polyamory, with a horde of would-be monogamists all vying for each others' attention over Tinder's siren call. "Before this kind of technology took off, people were meeting in bars or at work ," Theiss said. "You probably would have escalated your relationship more quickly to monogamy."

Our dating options may be increasing, Theiss and other researchers suggest, but so are our occasions to be suspicious and envious. "Peoples' eyes are opened to the possibility that people are maintaining emotional connections to a lot of people through technology," Theiss said. "The ability to connect with old partners and to still be online friends with them can create new opportunities for jealousy that didn't exist 30 or 40 years ago."

Stew, a Maryland man who is in an open relationship with his "main partner," M, said that even though he tries to be open-minded, he still sometimes feel uneasy when others flirt with his "beloveds" on Facebook.

"Sometimes I feel pangs of envy or insecurity," he said. "Maybe [the men doing the flirting] are really good at something I'm not, or they have an awesome job, or their life is so much cooler because they are internationally renowned underwater photographers or something."

Those of us who are in monogamous relationships will probably never stop being jealous-and that's healthy. What's not healthy is the way some monogamous people manipulate their partners' jealousy and devotion. According to Shackelford, women in monogamous relationships "are more likely to use sexual assets to induce jealousy in their partner," while "men will manipulate access to resources."

By contrast, the way polyamorous people tend to resolve their conflicts is more above-board. When extramarital relations are already out in the open, it seems there's little else to hide. "A big part of what makes someone feel jealous is when their expectations for the relationship are violated," Theiss said. "In poly situations, where they've actually negotiated the ground rules-'I care about you and I also care about this other person, and that doesn't mean I care less about you'-that creates a foundation that means [they] don't have to feel jealous. They don't have uncertainty about what's happening."

For example, as Conley, the polyamory researcher, has noted, "polyamory writings explicitly advocate that people revisit and reevaluate the terms of their relationships regularly and consistently-this practice could benefit monogamous relationships as well. Perhaps a monogamous couple deemed dancing with others appropriate a year ago, but after revisiting this boundary they agree that it is stressful and should be eliminated for the interim."

People in plural relationships get jealous, too, of course. But the way polys get jealous is unique-and possibly even adaptive. Rather than blame the partner for their feelings, the polys view the jealousy an irrational symptom of their own self-doubt.

Cassie and Josh had been dating a woman-let's call her Anne-for about a year and a half when all three went to a diner together. Josh, who doesn't like tomatoes, ordered a burger. Cassie went to the bathroom. When she came back, the burger had arrived and Anne was eating Josh's tomatoes.

Cassie loves tomatoes-and she always eats Josh's tomatoes.

"They were my freaking tomatoes," she said. "I had experienced the loss of my tomatoes, and that was a unique thing for me."

"I was going to be angry and scream, but then I thought, 'This is just tomatoes.'"

Rather than throw a tantrum or banish Anne from the triad, Cassie simply waited to cool off about the tomatoes, and the three moved on.

"I think everyone feels jealous," Josh said. "Us and the people we've dated and most of the people I know feel jealous. But when I think of jealousy, I think of it more as it's another emotion we express as jealousy. You're not actually jealous; you're feeling loss."

"I had revelations about jealousy back when I was trying to be monogamous," said Jonica, the 27-year-old living in the triad in Virginia. She realized "it's kinda silly. It produces the opposite effect that you supposedly want. If I was jealous of my lover, and I start acting out on that emotion, it's going to drive that person away from me."

Stew, the man in the open relationship, says that whenever jealousy surfaces, he and his partners recognize it as "one or more specific unmet needs, like wanting more date-like time together."

For example, his main partner, M, was recently feeling jealous that he was spending so much time with B, his girlfriend, and feared that Stew would eventually want to leave M for B. M "knows in her logical brain that this isn't the case, but thoughts like these are worries, like 'Did I leave the stove on?'" Stew said. "You can't logic them away."

So on top of reassuring M that he would never leave her, in times like these, Stew tries to lighten the mood "with a nice walk around the block, or making dinner with her, or being silly, or watching Netflix."

"We're in a place where, for the most part, we both are able to see feelings of envy and insecurity for what they are, and we have a deep bond of trust that is most often very easily accessible, which we can reach out to and touch when we need to remind ourselves that it's there," he said.

Josh and Cassie talk over and negotiate everything-"a lot more than other couples do," they think. The tomatoes were such a big deal because their allotment hadn't been previously agreed upon. (In the end, the three decided they would share all future tomatoes.)

Overall, Josh says sharing a life between three adults, rather than two, is not as kinky and complicated as some monogamous people might think. "The stuff in poly that's difficult is not the sex," he said. "It's where the goddamn spoons get put away."

In that sense, at least, poly and mono relationships are more alike than they are different.

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Polyamorous people still face plenty of stigmas, but some studies suggest they handle certain relationship challenges better than monogamous people do. When I met Jonica Hunter, Sarah Taub, and Michael Rios on a typical weekday afternoon in their tidy duplex in Northern Virginia, a very small part of me worried they might try to convert me.

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Polyamory.org.uk - Working Positively with Jealousy by Clair Lewis

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Polyamory.org.uk - Working Positively with Jealousy by Clair Lewis

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Insecurity and Jealousy in Polyamory - More Than Two

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Insecurity and Jealousy in Polyamory - More Than Two

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In this part of the site, you'll find essays on dealing with issues of jealousy, insecurity, and other gremlins in a polyamorous relationship. Here you'll find practical, hands-on advice for dealing with the green-eyed monster and building a sense of self that is strong and secure.

Buy a short e-book I co-wrote on jealousy management in polyamory.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Insecurity and Jealousy in Polyamory - More Than Two

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this part of the site, you'll find essays on dealing with issues of jealousy, insecurity, and other gremlins in a polyamorous relationship. Here you'll find practical, hands-on advice for dealing with the green-eyed monster and building a sense of self that is strong and secure.

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Why I Chose to Experiment With Polyamory

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Why I Chose to Experiment With Polyamory