How well does polyamory work?

He has extra love in his beard.

I have been on an Alan Moore kick lately.  I read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a while back, I just finished Watchmen, and I am now working through V for Vendetta.  Next, I’d love to get my hands on From Hell and Promethea.  Reading all this Alan Moore has made me realize…not only is the man a lion in the field of graphic novels, he is also a big, beardy polyamorist.  He and his first wife lived with another woman for several years, and Wikipedia can tell you how that turned out: wife and girlfriend left Moore, taking his children with them.

Alan Moore is crazy, and so I can imagine that his rendition of polyamory was perhaps not the most stable.  But how well does polyamory work in general?  Can people be satisfied and psychologically healthy in a polyamorous family (or system of polyamorous relationships)?

Before I launch into this, a quick note: by polyamory, I mean specifically “a form of relationship where it is possible, valid and worthwhile to maintain (usually long-term) intimate and sexual relationships with multiple partners simultaneously.” (Haritaworn, 2006, p. 515).  I am not interested here in gay open relationships or swingers (where multiple sexual relationships are allowed but multiple intimate relationships generally are not).  I am also looking only at the psychological functioning of individuals in polyamorous relationships.  I am not concerned with the political status of polyamory, its success or failure as a radical sociosexual movement, or anything of that sort.  I guess a better (though unwieldy) statement of my question would be, “How well does polyamory work in maintaining the psychological well-being of polyamorous partners?”

We love polyamory. And orange juice.

I enjoy a dash of epidemiology, so let’s start by saying that polyamory is not uncommon.  Estimating the prevalence of non-normative sexual behavior is always problematic, but a rough ballpark (by Newsweek, no less) holds that there are more than half a million polyamorous families living in the United States, largely concentrated in “liberal” cities like Seattle, San Francisco, etc.  As another estimate, an online polyamory magazine, Loving More, boasts over 15,000 readers.  Polyamory is certainly far from mainstream, but the idea of “loving more” than one person has taken root in the American (and English-speaking) psyche.  “Polyamory” entered the Oxford English dictionary in 2006, after all, and the past decade has seen an exponential increase in the number of English-speaking researchers and thinkers (and celebrities) who are writing, thinking (and talking) about the subject.  (Will Smith, even!  Who knew!)

But how well do these polyamorous relationships work?  Specifically: 1. How long do they last?  2. How are they constructed?  3. How satisfying are they?  Sadly, well-designed psychological studies of polyamory are few and far between.  I am a quantitative methodologist at heart, and so I am most persuaded by numbers and big sample sizes.  Wosick-Correa (2010) wrangled together 343 surveys from individuals in polyamorous relationships, then followed up by conducting 12 qualitative interviews with polyamorous families.  That’s pretty impressive.  Let’s take a look at what she found.

1. Polyamorous relationships have some longevity.  A third of Wosick-Correa’s sample, or over 100 individuals, stated that they had been in a polyamorous family for 10 years or more.  Given that 62% of heterosexual parents separate at some point during their relationship, I’d say a third of polyamorous families lasting for over a decade is pretty good!

2. Polyamorous relationships share similar elements as normative dyadic relationships.  Specifically, the construct of “commitment” seems particularly important for polyamorous families, and may serve to distinguish these relationships from swingers, open relationships, or other more casual sexual configurations.  Commitment is critical for normative dyadic relationships as well; the interdependence model (Rusbult & Van Lange, 2003) treats commitment as the ultimate output of a romantic relationship and the mechanism by which such relationships improve mental health and psychological well-being.  I’ll have more to say about this in a moment.

3. Polyamorous relationships appear to be satisfying for their component members.  It’s hard to say whether they are truly equivalent in satisfaction to heterosexual dyads, but members of polyamorous families report high levels of emotional and sexual intimacy.  They also report using communication skills to set boundaries with one another and to establish “privileged” behaviors, like certain sexual positions or special date nights.  Apparently it is important to maintain these privileged behaviors when a new partner enters the polyamorous family.

So, overall, it looks like polyamory can work.  You can establish a long-lasting, committed, and satisfied polyamorous family, provided you are willing to work at it and practice open communication.  I have two main concerns from a psychological perspective.

1. Jealousy.  Jealousy is so common in polyamorous relationships that poly self-help websites warn those considering a move to polyamory about their own battles with jealousy, and offer copious advice on how to deal with jealousy in all of its many forms.  And jealousy, of course, is deeply destructive both to relationships and to an individual psyche.  Havelock Ellis said it best (and most fantastically) when he said that jealousy is “‘that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.’’  Given that, in a polyamorous relationship, you know for a fact that your partner is sleeping with someone else (probably even in the next room), I can imagine jealousy would be difficult to manage and could, indeed, choke the life out of the relationship.

2. Stability.  This point goes back to the early comment about interdependence.  While it is conceptually questionable to use a dyadic theory (like interdependence) to describe non-dyadic relationships, I am struck by the fact that a critical component for developing relationship stability, at least according to interdependence theory, is lack of attractive alternatives to the partner.  This is also referred to as lack of autonomy, and it implies that a certain inertia maintains the stability of the relationship by disinclining partners to look elsewhere.  In a polyamorous relationship, levels of autonomy are purposefully left very high.  A tenet of polyamory is that one person cannot fulfill all of your emotional needs (which is true) and so additional relationship partners should be brought into the family to ensure that all needs are met.  This latter part makes me uncomfortable, not only because it violates the idea of stability (as the polyamorous family could be routinely in flux), but because it also implies a certain non-acceptance of emotional dissatisfaction.  “I can’t get my needs met by this person, so I will turn to this other person instead, and if they can’t do it then I will find another person who can.”  Relying on external sources for personal validation seems like it could result in personal, as well as relational, instability.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I began writing this post with a bias – I really didn’t think polyamorous relationships work.  And I had this bias even after treating a member of a polyamorous family in therapy and getting a detailed, insider perspective on polyamorous life.  (The issues that brought my client into therapy, by the way, were largely unrelated to her polyamory.)  I am also afraid, as are many gay rights activists, about the conflation of polyamorous relationships and same-sex relationships.  But after doing some research, I have to say that while polyamory seems more complicated than normative couplehood, I can’t conclude that it is psychologically harmful to partners or that it doesn’t work.  On the contrary, it looks like it does work and is working.  Now we really need some good, longitudinal studies to answer a part of my original question and tell us how these relationships work.