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Today's Good Morning America delved inside the increasing faux-scandalous trend of polyamorous relationships. Turns out — sacrebleu! — that they can be as sad and boring as monogamous ones, especially when one member of the relationship comes off as strikingly unhappy. Meet Jon! He is in a poly relationship with his partner of 10 years, Jaiya, and her partner of 4 years, Ian. While Jaiya describes her relationship with Ian as "full of love, passion," she describes Jon "an old shoe," a term of endearment that he's obviously uncomfortable with (but it's such a nice thing to say! Can Jaiya please be all of our girlfriends?). More »
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Random fact — I never dated until last year, at 22. It sounds weird because I'd been in relationships before, so I checked in with one of my best friends from college and asked her if I ever dated anyone. Sure you did, she said, you married him. Luls. Dating for the past year has taught me important things about what I need from people I get involved with- my first relationship post-marriage taught me that when things aren't working, sometimes trying to make it work is a waste of time, especially if you're not happy. I learnt that wanting to give someone their dream relationship doesn't work if that's not your idea of a dream relationship as well, and that adjusting your desires to fit what someone else wants is unfair to both people. Further down the line, I learnt from someone else that compatibility matters...especially when it comes to being monogamous or not. More »
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There are so many ways to have many partners; this map created by Franklin Veaux does a fantastic (and pretty) job of parsing the world beyond monogamy. Click to enlarge. More »
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Some days, I miss the term nonmonogamy. I should dust it off and give it some daylight, because I'm put off by how reductive the definition of the word polyamory has become lately. More »
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That's the question about to come before a Canadian court — but one anthropologist claims the practice of men marrying multiple wives is bad not just for women, but for everybody. More »
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Despite claims that her opinions are worthless because she does porn, Sasha Grey has a long and insightful interview with Dazed Digital about acting, relationships, sex, and prostitution. More »
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A recent History Channel documentary examined a swingers' retreat, and Jessica Bennett has a piece on polyamorists in this week's Newsweek. This sort of lifestyle has been covered before, so why does it still ruffle so many feathers? More »
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"From personal experience I can honestly say that, crazy as it sounds, the ménage à trois might be a solution to the problems of contemporary relationships." It doesn't sound crazy, Ewan Morrison: dudes have been trying this line for decades! More »
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Polyamory advocates now want their marriages recognized. Good luck with that! More »
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"'Maybe you need to see other girls...You should be free.' She added that while she had no interest in sleeping around, if I sowed a few oats she would turn a blind eye." Hmm... More »
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Once upon a time, serious fetishists could end up seriously lonely (or unfulfilled) people — because, let's face it, fetishists and fetishes have always been around. The Sexual Revolution brought a level of openness to hetero-normative sex and the desire for it, but, to one degree or another, it left a lot of people still in the closet. Between the growing acceptance of LGBT people and the interconnectivity brought by the Internet, some of the remaining barriers to finding the partner who fits your sexual proclivities are dissipating — but, as The Independent's Esther Walker learns, the level of openness or actual human connection isn't. More »
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Polyamory is becoming more mainstream lately — mainstream enough, that is, to be the subject of a lifestyle piece by Alex Williams in the Times yesterday. It's still fringe enough, though, that the Times could only get two polyamorists to go on the record about it, and that Williams treats the whole practice as sort of charmingly kooky. Polyamorist Ed Vessel bought a toothbrush for his girlfriend — and his other girlfriend! They all coordinate using GCal! Despite its gee-whiz tone, the article does make one thing clear — polyamory is a lot of work. More »
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• Love was in the air this week, especially for these gorillas who were doing it missionary. From now on, missionary sex will be referred to as "gorilla style."

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So like, sometimes I want to tell you guys about a story that's, like, too nuanced and complex to distill into a cynical one-liner. And then I think "pageviews!" and just skip it. But what the hell: it's about a small polyamory convention going down somewhere in exurban Pennsylvania, and it kind of — I know, I know — made me reexamine my prejudices (?) a bit. I mean, polyamory is one of those things it's all too easy to associated with, like, free-bleeding and Xena conventions and other subcultures too dorky, too fully occupied by people who are just too completely divorced from the desire for mainstream acceptance, to really want to examine in a way deeper than "not that there's anything wrong with that," right? But the story, while rife with harmless little digs at classes with names like "Hap-poly Ever After" and "Threesome, Foursome and Moresome," actually poses a striking question: is poyamory actually maybe a utopian ideal borne of a courageously humanistic mix of selflessness and pragmatism? More »
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Are single women who take birth control when they fall in love CHEATING MEN WITH THEIR DECEPTIVE PHEROMONES??? That's the rather radical spin on what seemed to me to be a relatively rational chat between a psychology blogger and the editor of a big cover story about the chemistry of love in TIME, sent to me late last night with a rather enraged rant by a certain bisexual polyamorous friend of the blog. Now: my inclination is to think women who take birth control before they're even in a relationship are cheating themselves, because while condoms do indeed suck why would you want to fuck without the pheromonal connection? Only to, once again, risk the possibility of falling in love with someone who's probably, once again, not right for you? The answer, my bipoly friend explained to me, is simple: there's a flaw in my logic. I was operating under the assumption that humans were built for monogamy. And that's not true! "All the science" says so. My IM reeducation after the jump. More »
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