Is One Partner Not Enough for You? You May Be a Polyamorist.

28.08.2010 | By: Z.J.

Have you always wanted to have more than one partner and be honest with them about it? Check out the life of a polyamorist.

Polyamory – several love relationships at the same time. (Photoxpress)

What is polyamory?

Polyamory is the term consisting of the Greek word for more – ‘poli’ and the Latin word for love – ‘amor’, and it therefore refers to “love for more than one partner”. This love can be sexual, emotional, spiritual or their combination.

It means orientation that can only be a principle or put into practice. A polyamorist is therefore a person who is single. Polyamory, however, doesn’t mean any kind of deviation from monogamy – if there’s no consensus, resolved matters or at least a certain level of communication among all the involved, it’s simply cheating.

Polyamorist’s values

Polyamory is based on honesty and openness and the key values of polyamorists, as they call themselves, are fidelity, loyalty, respect, trust, dignity, mutual support, communication, negotiations and unpossessiveness. For that reason, polyamorists are also familiar with the term ‘coming-out’.

They imagine fidelity and loyalty in a slightly different way than most, monogamous people. Jealousy isn’t considered a sign of love or moral weakness, which is sometimes used as criticism by people who don’t understand polyamory (they therefore don’t take respect and mutual communication into account) and want to drag their partner into a relationship he or she isn’t ready to establish. Jealousy is just an emotion that requires our attention, similar to depression, and has to be explored.

What’s love like with several partners?

Some relationships are bisexual, while others are monosexual (that is, solely heterosexual or homosexual). Polyamory may have a hierarchical structure. The hierarchical version distinguishes between primary, secondary etc. partners. The status of the primary partner may be equal to the status of a marital partner.

Polyamory doesn’t have any rules, but there are different variations in terms of number and gender structure and in terms of partners’ residence and division of work. Some relationships last for a long time and people also have children.

Polyamorists say that in fact people aren’t polygamous or monogamous beings. There are only polygamous and monogamous relationships. Everything therefore depends on the arrangement between all the people involved.

The flag of polyamorists.

Advantages and disadvantages

One of the main advantages is the division of work related to the care of children who are born in such relationships and other benefits of such a life, for instance, the division of costs (if everyone lives in the same apartment or house).

The worst weakness is definitely the problem of finding people who agree to such a lifestyle and not solely to the principle. Then, there are problems in connection with the legislation regulating ownership rights and custody of children and so on.

How do you recognize a polyamorist?

The symbol of polyamorists is a read heart with the blue infinity sign. Poly pride flag is a flag displayed on pride parades; it consists of blue, red and black stripes with the Greek letter phi (the first letter of polyamory) as a coat-of-arms.