Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners Read Free

consequences for the next seven generations. As the grandmother of two preschoolers, this consideration is now a very personal one.
    Since I first began researching alternatives to monogamy and the nuclear family nearly three decades ago, I’ve been in communication with tens of thousands of people around the world about their experiences with polyamory. Many of these people attended my seminars or conferences I organized or spoke at; some have been coaching clients or read my books; a few are also researchers, activists, or academics; and some are personal friends, family, or lovers. I’ve been in contact with quite a few of these people for fifteen years or more. I’ve watched them fall in love, once or many times; add partners to existing relationships; form new relationships; struggle with jealousy or addictions; confront deaths and life-threatening illness, career changes, and geographic changes; marry, divorce, and remarry; get pregnant; and raise children and send these children off to college. I’ve watched them open their relationships and close them, come out of the closet, get religion, lose religion, become financially successful, and lose their life savings.
    I’ve done my best to protect the confidentiality of these people as well as their families and loved ones while also relating accurately the essence of their words. I have changed names, dates, locations, and details of appearance, professions, and avocations. In some cases, I have blended the words and the histories of different people into composites while always endeavoring to keep the significant facts true to life. The only exception to this is people who are teachers and writers who are already totally “out of the closet” and so public with their lifestyle that I would hardly be infringing on their privacy to name them. In fact, they wish to be known to a wider audience and perhaps to correct mistaken impressions of their lifestyle as sometimes portrayed by the media.
    In all honesty, after twenty-five years as a relationship coach, seminar leader, and participant observer in the polyamory community, I’m not at all sure that polyamory can fulfill its potential for sustainable intimacy, as I hoped when I subtitled my 1992 book Love without Limits the “Quest for Sustainable Intimate Relationships.” Nevertheless, as the twenty-first century rolls on, it’s increasingly apparent that lifelong monogamy is more myth than actuality and that the nuclear family is an endangered species.
    Now more than ever, it’s essential that we release our attachments to x v i
    I N T R O D U C T I O N
    conditioned beliefs about love, sex, intimacy, and commitment and be willing to discover and embrace whatever works. The one thing that is abundantly clear is that what works may not be the same for all people or even for the same person at different points in life. In addition, while the health and happiness of the adults who are struggling to create all kinds of relationships while honoring their innate sexuality under very challenging conditions is vital, it is the well-being of the next generations that is of greatest consequence.
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    WHAT IS POLYAMORY?
    P olyamory is an invented word for a different kind of relationship. Poly comes from Greek and means “many.” Amory comes from Latin and means “love.” Mixing Greek and Latin roots in one word is against the traditional rules, but then so is loving more than one person at a time when it comes to romantic or erotic love.
    The word polyamory was created in the late 1980s by Morning Glory and Oberon Zell. This couple, who have been married since 1974, continue to enjoy a deeply bonded open relationship that has morphed in many directions over the years, including a live-in triad lasting ten years and a six-person group marriage that recently dissolved after ten years.
    The Zells did not invent the lifestyle, which has come to be known as polyamory, nor did I, though we are among a handful of pioneers