It’s the usual framing around – Are you ready? What might happen? And there’s the usual focus on sex and threesomes etc… but it’s not all bad and at least there is a reference to feelings, needs, community and networks of support. Non-monogamy includes developing non-sexual connections and is also practised by ace and aro people and so the media obsession with threesomes and orgies is a little tiresome but I also get that this is how the media works 🙂
The article is here.
I like these quotes:
Cassidy discovered polyamory at 38 when she realised ‘like a bolt from the blue’ that she needed more than her marriage could offer… She says the Covid crisis has, for everyone, been ‘a big chance to reassess what we’re doing, how we do it, why we’re making the choices we make, in terms of structures and ideas about how relationships should look and how they could look’.
For Cassidy, opening up to polyamory isn’t about simply bolting on a new person to save an existing relationship. ‘It’s about a network of people that meet different needs and that can support each other in mutual ways,’ she says.
The experience may be a slower burn — and potentially time-consuming, contrary to the misconception that switching to polyamory will suddenly mean you’re having sex all the time, Rare laughs. ‘There’s a lot of admin involved in it. I don’t have the capacity to date loads of people. So, when newer people enter the fold, it’s on the basis of friendship that then can have romantic and sexual elements to it.’
So, while some may keep their desires in the virtual world, and other relationships may actually open up now that the world has, Cassidy just welcomes the normalisation of these feelings and needs. ‘It doesn’t mean we have to act on them, but it’s finding a safe space in your relationship to talk about these things without fear, without judgement.’ It’s time to get out on the scene and get to grips with the monogam-issue at hand.
