Abstract
Have you ever heard of the lobster theory of sexuality? Even if you haven’t, you’ve probably done it. As it happens lobsters typically practise serial-monogamy, a sex and relationship style based on a series of consecutive monogamous parings, much like the dominant relationship style in western society. Not a lobster? After 15 years of ethnographic research Elizabeth Sheff has an answer for you: honest, consensual, multiple partner relationships, in other words, polyamory.
Polyamorists, those committed to what Sheff calls the ‘polyamorous possibility’ of loving multiple people simultaneously, make up a growing community of individuals and families in America. In diverse and unpredictable ways they are claiming space for alternative relationships based on ‘choice’, ‘love’, and being ‘born that way’. Sheff’s fair and balanced account guides her readers through polyamory for beginners. It’s not propaganda. If it were, she would have left some things out. And it’s not a how to guide. As a veteran of a failed polyamorous relationship, Sheff does not believe that everyone should ‘do poly’, nor that everyone would be interested. Rather, Sheff’s purpose is to give a voice to members of the poly community and to share their stories of successful strategies, fulfilling relationships, catastrophes, and implications for policy makers and monogamists.
The unofficial poly rules are as follows: communicate openly, be honest, negotiate safer sex, be compassionate, take responsibility for yourself, be flexible, and don’t be a dick. Outside of these norms there’s not much black and white. Once you’re poly, everything is gray. The absence of cultural references or conventional wisdom about how to be poly allows for creative and constructive relationships tailored to the needs of members. Sheff’s study of families shows that changing family structures (two fathers and a mother in the same house, for example) can reinterpret gender roles or challenge a version of monogamy that prizes sexual exclusivity as a kind of ownership. Furthermore, multiple parents may be better able to support their children with more bodies to offer rides, resources, and attention to kids, while allowing other parents some needed down time.
Contrary to the popular myth that polyamory is all about more sex with more people, Sheff’s respondents indicated that the greatest benefits of their relationships came from more love, more needs met, and more support. As one respondent expressed: ‘If I wanted a lot of easy sex poly was not the way to go. Waaaaaaaaay too much talking for that.’ (p. 40) The focus on honest communication and accepting as natural changes in relationship status or interests may give polys better tools to grapple with issues that some monogamists might lie, cheat, or break up over.
Of course it’s not all coming up roses ‘next door’. Poly families face the same range of difficulties mono families do, plus some. They deal with jealousy, crowding of shared spaces, difficulty coordinating schedules, and stigma from their communities, their families, and the legal system. Multiple relationships are time consuming. Gender inequality and homophobia often persist within poly relationships as they do in wider society. The community tends to be largely white and middle class, sometimes perceived as exclusive to other demographics. It was not in Sheff’s scope to do more than postulate why, but it leaves a significant question begging. Although polys often cite the broader community as a source of support, it reads as cultish and insular. If members break the rules, they may find themselves exiled by fellow polys. Sheff reserves extensive comment, but this seemed an unsettling practice for a group defined by their generous and open loving.
Avoiding a poly polemic, Sheff never makes this point, but I finished the book with a distinct feeling that monogamists think more about sex than polyamorists do. Indeed, the poly approach decenters sex as the defining feature of a relationship. Polyaffectivity, as Sheff terms it, is a deep and meaningful love not based on exclusive sexual access, or biological or legal bonds. This kind of love means that wanting, or not wanting, to have sex with someone doesn’t have to change the importance of the relationship. Whether engaged in relationships poly or mono, polyaffectivity has something to it: love is not a zero-sum game.
What we learn from Sheff, then, is not that we should all be poly, nor that monogamists are victims of repressed traditionalism. Rather she shows how polys are taking advantage of a lack of rules and role models to negotiate spaces for living and loving with multiple partners. Sometimes this ends in disaster. Other times it offers opportunities. These opportunities turn out not to be that radical (honest communication is not exactly a new idea), and certainly aren’t the exclusive purview of the poly community. They do however demonstrate the possibility of viable, healthy, and satisfying alternatives that have heretofore been derided as dysfunctional. Further, they remind the reader that there may be benefits to experimenting with recipes for relationship success.
Sheff provides an informative account of polyamorists, and does so without a mission of conversion. Her account is fair, including both the mundane and the mercurial, both the intriguing and the unsavoury, and puts the growing poly community on the relationship map. It’s up to readers to decide whether lobster is still the best thing on the menu, but I suppose that depends on how it’s prepared.