A two-day event for everyone who knows that happy and honest relationships don’t have to be monogamous, Polyday combines a day of discussions and an evening of dancing to give you a chance to meet like-minded people, to build our community and to celebrate its diversity

The theme this year is “How do you do it?”. There will be workshops all Saturday, including one run by me called ‘Introduction to polyamory’, and then a pub quiz and disco in the evening. On the Sunday there will be a special workshop all afternoon with Dossie Easton, author of The Ethical Slut, on jealousy in poly relationships. Other Saturday workshops include speed dating, agony aunt, poly activism, time management and poly households.

Hope to see lots of you there! Keep an eye on the website because the venue for the Sunday workshop may change for accessibility reasons.

The first model is a committed couple who allow each other just sex outside their relationship. For a couple like this, the primary relationship is solid and the relationships with other lovers are of much lesser importance. The ‘flings’ or one-night stands outside the primary relationship give a buzz, a bit of fun, some relief of potential boredom, or just a change.

This first model includes couples who go together to sex parties and swinger’s clubs. Or it might be that one or other of them goes to such events, while the other isn’t interested (but knows about their partner going).

A second model is a couple who are committed primary partners but also have secondary partners. The secondary relationships are romantic and loving and ongoing, but the secondary partners do not share the everyday things in life to the same extent that primary partners do. Everyone knows that the primary relationship always comes first. Sometimes, two people who both have primary partners can be secondary partners to each other.

A third model is a triad or a larger group, in which three or more people form a committed, loving relationship. In these groups, no one couple-relationship is more important than the other couple-relationships. The group usually live together, share their everyday lives and feel committed to stay together as a group.

And the fourth model is an individual who doesn’t have a primary partner but instead has a network of partners with whom they share parts of their lives. This can be like conventional dating, with new lovers coming and going, one-night stands or flings lasting weeks or months, and perhaps some ongoing long-distance lovers. The difference from conventional singles is that the person openly has more than one lover and tells all their lovers this (though they don’t necessarily give details of each lover to the others).

There are many possible variations and combinations of these models. I have come across examples of:

• two committed primary partners who are generally monogamous but to open up their relationship just once and a specific circumstances
• two primary opposite-sex couples where each man is also a secondary partner with each woman from the other couple
• a polyamorous network of partners and lovers where some people have two equal primary partners as well as several secondaries and where friendship and romantic relationships blend into one another
• a committed triad who allow each other casual lovers (as in the first model) or secondary partners (as in their second model)
• a married couple who are searching for a woman to form a triad with (this seems to be very common, though stable triads that form in this way are much rarer)
• a quad in which all members were primary partners to all other members.

Sometimes one kind of set-up will evolve into another: for instance if a secondary partner of one of a couple turns into an equal partner in a triad with both of them. Or a relationship starts off monogamous, then the couple explore opening it up but with strict rules to ensure that any ‘outside sex’ is only casual, and after a while they relax the rules and perhaps meet someone who becomes a secondary partner or form a triad.

Following on from my post on promises, it is important when making promises to work out between you which model of open relationship you would find acceptable and which you are sure you want to rule out. Remember that you and your relationship will evolve and your promises might need to reflect that possibility.

(For those not in the UK, Metro is a free daily paper distributed in all the major UK cities.)

People who push hard for years to get a bandwagon rolling are usually unprepared for what to do when the bandwagon finally starts to move… Unless the people with the original vision stop just shoving the rear bumper and run up and grab the steering wheel, pretty soon the bandwagon outruns them and leaves them behind. And their elation turns to horror as it starts careening downhill unguided, in disastrous unintended directions. And then wrecks itself spectacularly in a ditch…

So maybe it’s time for we poly activists to pay less attention to pushing the polyamory-awareness movement, and more to steering it.

Alan says we should be taking every opportunity to save the word polyamory from being cheapened, and should in particular:

Insist on the part of the definition that stresses respect and the “full knowledge and consent of all involved”

This is well said and timely. I have visions of, say, a woman on a reality TV show boasting that she are ‘polyamorous’ because she has had sex with several men recently, conveniently forgetting about the need to tell each man about the others. And the same woman would no doubt be be horrified if one of these men told her he has another partner. Save us from polyamory becoming a cool word!

But I have a feeling that this is inevitable and that the word will be misused. Alan has in fact posted some examples of its misuse last year. Yes, we poly activists should keep insisting that it is used correctly, but as an editor I know you can’t control how a word evolves, even when thousands of pedants are devoted to keeping the original meaning.

Where Open Fidelity comes in

Am I helping or hindering this process with my new term open fidelity?

On the minus side, a few people have accused me of muddying the waters by using a new term when polyamory would do just as well for most of what I am saying.

On the plus side, the term open fidelity is more easily grasped on first hearing and doesn’t need explanation, whereas polyamory usually needs a definition before the penny drops. And I feel that as the various types of ethical non-monogamous relationships become more widely discussed, it is useful to make distinctions (see my previous post on the different definitions for more on this).

It is precisely because I don’t want to dilute the definition of polyamory that I have chosen a new term to describe something related – but not identical – to it.

The important thing is that, like many others, I am doing my bit to tell the world that being monogamous isn’t the only way to be faithful, and that honest open relationships and multiple loving relationships are possible. The more of us that do that, whatever terminology we use, the better.

What do you think? Which term do you use for your own relationship(s), and do you think having both terms is useful? And what can we do to keep the meanings of both terms clear?

The year or more of upheaval and communication helped them to work through not just Philippa’s gender identity issues but also Jennie’s difficulties with monogamy. Jennie needed a man in her life, preferably a man who could be a dominant partner. Philippa had never wanted to play this role anyway, and she certainly didn’t want to play it now she had transitioned. Jennie didn’t want to deceive Philippa again, and Philippa didn’t feel threatened by Jennie’s interest in men.

So they hit on a potential solution: they would look for a man who could be partner and lover to them both. A tall order? Perhaps – but as luck would have it, their first venture to the UK Bisexual Conference (Bicon) with this aim in mind was successful. They met Don, a bisexual man who had been married twice before.

After the conference, it was Jennie who first got to know Don better while Philippa left them to it, and then Don and Philippa spent a weekend together and found that they too were very compatible. Less than a year after the three of them met, they decided over a shared ice cream in a cafe that they would commit to a three-way relationship, a triad. Don moved in with them and a while later they bought a big house together.

They have now lived there, with their two adult children staying for longer or shorter periods, for several years. Visiting them is like visiting any other family of their ages. There may be three of them, but they are as comfortable and ordinary together as any long-married couple. When I visited them they were bickering affectionately about what style of kitchen cupboards to buy. Jennie says:

There’s more people to share the bills, more people to share the worries, more people to share the work. If one is ill, there are two other people to rally round and take care of stuff. Remember, if you try to make a structure with two forms of support, it’s going to fall over, but a structure with three points of support is stable.

Triads

Triad relationships are very rare, much rarer than other kinds of Open Fidelity. Two people finding that they are compatible enough to share their lives for years or decades? This happens remarkably often, although many people spend years searching in vain for such a partner. One person finding two others who are both compatible with them? That can also happen, and if they are either honest about this and negotiate well, or (less ideally) they keep the two secret from each other, the parallel relationships can last. Those two others finding they are compatible with each other too? The chances of this happening are much lower.

All the triads I have encountered started with a committed couple getting to know a third person and finding that the liking and attraction flowed in all directions. If a triad does happen, it can be very stable, and there are a lot of advantages to this kind of relationship. As Jennie points out, buying a house with three salaries is easier than with two. Even when one partner wants to be alone or go out independently, the other two needn’t be lonely because they still have each other around. When two of a triad are in conflict, there is a third person with a vested interest in helping them to work it out but who can see the problem from the outside. And of course the possibilities for sex are enormous.

I know of only a few other triads that have lasted. Jennie, Philippa and Don are very lucky, or else (or perhaps also) very good at loving communication and negotiation. And they had an advantage in their involvement in Bicon, where there are always workshops on polyamory and on negotiation in relationships. Their example shows that it can be done.

If you want to listen to the show online, it will be available only until tomorrow morning UK time at http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/local_radio/ (click on Listen Again, and you will need to download Realplayer if you don’t already have it.

• a couple in a long-term committed relationship in which one or both of them have ongoing secondary relationships with another partner, with everyone’s knowledge and consent;
• three people who form a committed relationship between all (I call this a triad);
• four people in who form a committed relationship between all, or in which all are linked to all the others but aren’t necessarily romantically or sexually involved with everyone else (a quad);
• larger groups in which each person has a romantic relationship with at least one and mostly more than one other member.

These would probably all be classified as polyamorous relationships by most people familiar with the term (do you disagree? Add a comment!). They all involve romantic relationships and long-term commitment, and generally sex as well, with more than one person.

Polyamory is also often seen as an identity: someone might describe themself as a polyamorous person, that is, someone who is capable of polyamorous relationships and would like to be in such relationships, regardless of whether they have one, two or more or even no partners at the moment.

But there are other types of open, honest, responsible nonmonogamous relationships that some wouldn’t include within the concept of polyamory. For example:

• couples who otherwise behave monogamously but sometimes go together to sex parties or swingers’ clubs and have sexual encounters with others, in each other’s presence;
• couples who have agreed that they can each have sexual encounters with other people but don’t want these other encounters to develop into romantic relationships and have agreed rules to keep the relationships with others casual;
• people who aren’t in a committed relationship at the moment and who date (or plan to date) several people in parallel, explaining to each new date that they are also seeing (and perhaps having sex with) other people.
• people who would prefer to be monogamous but who are in a relationship with someone who finds this difficult and have therefore agreed to allow them other relationships as long as they are honest ones.

This blog is called Open Fidelity rather than Polyamory because I aim to show that the ideas of polyamory can be useful to anyone, including people who don’t identify as polyamorous themselves. Most people are interested in long-term relationships with only one person at a time, even if they don’t want to be strictly monogamous. So polyamorous relationships are probably always going to be a minority pursuit. I believe everyone can find these ideas useful, even those who fully intend to be monogamous, and even perhaps those who intend to cheat on their partners.

So what is Open Fidelity? It is being open about your attractions to more than one person and how you act on these attractions, and it is being faithful to any promises you have made to your partner. Before explaining this in more detail I will look further into the problems with the currently accepted way of doing things.

Here is Nell describing her experience of being unfaithful:

“I was monogamous for seven months with one boyfriend. When an opportunity for sex arose with a close female friend, I was very happy to go with it. But now I knew I was supposed to be monogamous, and so this was clandestine. She knew of him, but he was unaware. For the following year I was increasingly sexual with others. My boyfriend remained mostly unaware, though I sailed close to the wind several times. I understood that the status quo was supposed to be monogamy, and I simply saw myself as destined to be unfaithful. I knew that I didn’t love my boyfriend any less because I was sharing sexualness with other people, in fact some of these others offered things that he never could, and maybe it helped us remain together. I rarely had guilt at my sexual relationships with other people. I knew he would find it hard to know, but I was becoming increasingly aware of my own discomfort at this dishonesty.

“It seemed wrong that the person I professed to love most was not the person I could share everything with. It’s not the practice of deceit – I’m exceptionally good at deceit, and always have been – by nature I was secretive and I found the act of dishonesty very easy. However, emotionally, it had stopped making sense. I needed to be able to share the fullness of my life and relationships with the person I was having my most important relationship with. Yet I didn’t know how to do this without destroying that relationship. Already, several times, I had had to admit to being sexual with another, and twice, he had broken off the relationship because of this, though only for a matter of weeks. He had also asked me to be monogamous, and I had said ‘yes’, because I didn’t know how to say anything else. Each time, shortly afterwards, I had broken that decision and given myself a hard time about my inability to trust myself to remain faithful. And yet knowing, still, that I didn’t love my boyfriend any less.

“In the end what happened was it seemed to be that if I said I would be monogamous, almost immediately I’d be sexual with someone else. It was like I was proving to myself that I couldn’t keep that promise. Apparently I didn’t want to even try. Reading my diaries, I had written something like ‘I can’t even trust myself, I only promised last week that I wouldn’t be sexual with other men, and here I am, this has happened, and I can’t keep my promise’.”

Have you had an experience like this? Have you had a secret affair and felt guilty? Have you promised yourself that you would never do it again, and then broken that promise? There is a solution.

Nell later discovered for herself that it was possible to be nonmonogamous in an open and honest way. Many other people I have interviewed have also discovered this. She learnt about polyamory, which means having honest, loving and/or romantic relationships with more than one person. I’ll write more about polyamory in the next post: it is not exactly the same as open fidelity but has a lot in common with it.