Polyamory: when love is so much that is for many

Translated from the original published in Spanish in Cromos Magazine on October 2018.

I talked with several polyamorous persons in order to understand this kind of relational identity in which love, for oneself and others, seems to overflow to the point that it can’t concentrate in just one person.

“I’m starting a mostly sexual relationship with someone that lives in Paris. I have another relationship that is mainly intellectual and spiritual with someone that lives in Spain. I also have an affective and sexual relationship with a person that is here (in Bogotá) and another one that is what in polyamory is known as, ‘queer-platonic’, something like a romantic friendship that doesn’t involve sex”, is the explanation I received regarding the affective network of one of my interviewees.

I feel a combination of amazement and jealousy. Amazement because, parting from my monogamous affective experience, I can only imagine the complexity of having four relationships at the same time; jealousy imagining the enormous exchange of love that must happen between the members of that network. Polyamory is a practice in which you have multiple sexual, affective, intimate and long-lasting relationships with various people at the same time, given their consent for this eccentric arrangement.

***

Lucía Vargas is a writer. Her words are strong and bright. She doesn’t like labels and that’s why she prefers not to classify herself as polyamorous, even though she recognizes she practices this relational identity.

“Love is so great that I compare it to a deity – she says with forcefulness - As humans, like we’ve done it with God through religions, we try to approach love the best way we can and as we best understand it and experience it”. Polyamory for her is a logical response to the changing of times and the necessity that human beings have of experiencing affection and establishing relationships.

For her, we are all polyamorous but don’t allow ourselves to follow that instinct. She throws another affirmation: “We need to stop accepting the ‘noes’ from outside and start embracing the ‘yeses’ that we hear on the inside”. That’s the rule she followed when she decided to take a chance and live far from monogamy.

She saw various failed examples of the idea of relationships she grew up with, so she decided to change it. She discovered that many of the regular relationship models came from male chauvinistic visions of the world like women being faithful and committed for life with their male partners, and infidelity being well received in men and condemned for women. That’s why she decided to drive herself out of those paths.

“You are unable to give something that you don’t have. If you have love you’re obliged to share it” she says. In order to love several persons at the same time, you must experience a profound self love because you can’t seek in others what you’re missing on the inside, she clarifies. This affirmation led us to talk about the toxicity of certain monogamous relationships, which is reflected in common phrases like ‘I can’t live without you’.

I ask her, “How do you make your relationships work?” “Dialogue and communication must be the foundation of every relationship because they transform knowledge into a tool for making decisions” is her response.

At the end of this conversation I have an idea in mind that I didn’t expect: polyamory involves love flowing in every direction including the one we tend to neglect the most, the one that goes in our way.

***

Alba founded an online community that surpasses 2.700 followers on Facebook and is called ‘Poliamor Bogotá’ (Bogota Polyamory). The fan page started on December 2016 and on January of the following year, the collective held an informative gathering that had a small number of assistants. By the fifth gathering they reunited 90 persons interested in learning more about polyamory and, furthermore, interested in being part of a community they felt related to. Nowadays, they do monthly gatherings called ‘Politintos’, workshops open to every relational identity and sexual orientation in which a particular theme is discussed.

Mateo and Iska, two members of Bogota Polyamory, join my conversation with Alba. They tell me that they joined the collective based on personal needs: in order to stop feeling like outsiders when they thought about having relationships with multiple people at the same time, to be able to learn and get informed about the way they were choosing to live their affectivity and because they wanted to be able to be polyamorous freely.

They explain to me that when they first discovered their relationship interests, they went online seeking information and what they found was highly sexual content, like swinger couples, orgies and so forth, that wasn’t at all like polyamory.

I inquire about how to make polyamory relationships work and they reassure the importance of communication. They introduce a new concept that is going to be vital: terms of agreement. Each relational network depends exclusively on the terms of agreement between those involved. Information must flow freely so each one knows the limits of those agreements.

Having this in mind, polyamory can have as many ways of expression as people practicing it. There are networks in which all the members are in love with each other. There are others in which the term ‘meta-loves’ is used, people that know their partner has another partner but have never met them. There are also exclusively sexual, romantic or intellectual types of relationships. “Love is infinite, but time is limited”, Alba says to me. This phrase helps explain that the maximum of people they can get involved with depends on the time they have to dedicate to them.

They tell me that polyamorous practices date to the third century BC but were replaced for others closer to religion and again, to male chauvinistic visions of the world, which make feminism one of polyamory’s pillars. As a collective, they don’t aim to lecture anyone or establish polyamory as the best relational identity, they just want to make it visible so they can claim their rights as a diverse community.

Polyamorous persons can’t get legally married in Colombia. They can constitute patrimonial unions that allow them to have legal power over their partners’ belongings and wealth (that’s the case of the famous male throuple that got married in Medellín , Colombia, in 2017). This figure allows polyamorous persons to have a legal bond but takes away the recognition and status that the figure of marriage brings.

When I ask them about jealousy, they confess that they feel it but have different strategies for controlling it. One of them introduces a new word to me that has no precise translation to English; in Spanish is ‘compersión’, an empathic state of happiness and pleasure derived from the happiness and pleasure of others; in this case, the happiness and pleasure your partner feels coming from a person that isn’t you. Polyamory keeps surprising me with its type of generous and selfless love.

They explain that they reject those who take polyamory as an excuse for having lots of sexual partners leaving aside the affective responsibility of it. They also mention the term ‘kink-inclusivity’, another one of the collective’s pillars, that they use to explain they’re a group open to discussing sex and they accept different and varied sex practices.

In the ‘Politinto’, people’s need of talking and being heard is evident. They tell me in our conversation: “not only polyamory is in a closet, but they’re also different types of closets regarding family, friends, workspace, etc.” and this idea gains force at the ‘Politinto’ as I see people sharing experiences with strangers with whom they feel safe.

***

I only communicate with Clémence* via voice notes. She’s French but knows Spanish. She has practiced polyamory for more than 10 years and has varied between it and monogamy. Upfront, she says that for her polyamory is the most generous, kind and self-giving form of love. She also recognizes that is not a practice meant for everyone and that she doesn’t know if she’ll end up having only polyamorous relationships or monogamous ones, but she’ll never accept being forced into monogamy.

When she was little, she wanted to understand why her parents weren’t married and his father told her: “when you love someone you want that person to be happy, even if that means that person being with somebody else.” For Clémence that phrase changed the way she understood relationships.

She learned about polyamory in a gathering that was the first of its type in France. She started practicing it and also reading informative books and attending events organized for persons like her. Being part of a community and learning from it is vital in polyamory.

For Clémence, polyamory means a profound acceptance of each person’s freedom and, at the same time, is the reinforcement of self-trust, elements that help handling jealousy. She says that polyamory is a lesson of humbleness because you understand that you can’t completely satisfy other person’s needs and therefore, is only logical that such person looks out for other partners besides you.

***

After all these conversations I conclude that polyamory is an act of bravery because it chooses the difficulty of moving away from social common standards. I learn key things that are important for any relationship: getting to know myself in order to really understand what I’m looking for in a relationship, stop waiting for others to fill my own voids, loving myself deeply, and recognize the importance of my partner’s happiness and freedom.

The image that represents the polyamorous community is a heart that has an infinite symbol across, meaning that they haven’t found limits for their love. They practice it on the fundamentals that every relationship should have: consent, honesty, compromise and equity.

*We change the name as a petition from the source.