Here Come the Grooms

A (not really that conservative) case for polygamous (polyamorous?) marriage.

Courtesy of WIkimedia Commons

Recently, the topic of polyamorous marriage has come up. Here’s The New Yorker article about it. In case you don’t click the link, it’s about polyamorous, liberal families and polygamous, conservative families coming together to advocate for the same thing: the ability to marry more than one partner. The article doesn’t openly advocate either way; mostly it tells endearing personal stories of people in both polygamous and polyamorous relationships.

I’ve been thinking about that article for a few days. I don’t often talk about the desire for polyamorous marriage. To be honest to you, it doesn’t impact my life all that much. I’m far more interested in equity for others, in defeating capitalism and racism and other forms of oppression. Why would I care about wanting to get married while someone in Yemen is starving to death? Also, being polyamorous, I can tell you with full honestly that I’m not all that oppressed. I’m white, college-educated, cisgender, employed, and middle class, for one. I am not seen as being part of a marginalized group. Many people believe polyamory is always a choice, while sexuality is never a choice. I find there is a grey area in both statements, but I am not here to argue that point: I am both bisexual and polyamorous, whether by choice or not on both counts.

I certainly experience bigotry on a personal level; family members who no longer speak to me or refuse to recognize my non-wedded partner and think his mere existence is some sort of affront to my family and God and all of that. But that mostly comes in the form of words, which hurt me personally — but I haven’t lost a job or income or any other support because of it. I won’t be arrested in Virginia for having two partners. Heck, my family still talks to me; my conservative parents and in-laws (all of them!) have made an effort to include us, and my sister and sister-in-law and their families treat me no differently at all whatsoever. I am continually affirmed online and in real life. 60-75% of the population may view my family as bad and strange and unnatural, but I can’t sit here and say to you that it’s been as oppressive as what I imagine other people have experienced.

Even LGBT people coming out to their parents in conservative cultures have likely faced more scrutiny and bigotry than me, especially trans people — polyamory being seen as an annoying bad choice people disagree with, rather than a vital core part of my identity that must be quashed. And non-monogamy is more complex in all its forms: it’s hard to even study it because it looks so different to each person who practices it. A wide variety of people and labels and relationship structures exist. Would statisticians include me and my family with swingers? With single people without kids just keeping things casual with multiple people? With an otherwise monogamous couple only dating together, using other people to fulfill their own sexual fantasies, often in unhealthy ways? Probably, they would.

How strange to be a living example of someone’s worst-case scenario, end-result slippery slope argument. “If you let the gays get married, they’ll let you marry more than one person next!” Okay? As the debate of same-sex marriage acceptance continues to rage on (still???) in religious contexts, here I am, engaging in the sort of life that fundamentalists would compare to horrors like bestiality and pedophilia. My word, do you really think that of me? Is consent truly such a foreign concept to you? Am I (and the people in same-sex relationships) really on the same level of sexual “sin” in your mind? I shudder to think of it.

I hope that in my openness in regarding my polyamory, other monogamous, “normie” people might think of me and realize that no, I’m not depraved or cruel or anything more than the average person. I just happen to be in more primary romantic relationships than most other people are. My life is so boring and typical it would stun you. My daily activities and focuses are no different than yours. But it’s 2021, and same-sex marriage has been fully legal for six years, and despite the radical fundamentalist rejections, widespread acceptance of homosexuality has been spreading now for over two decades. I hope polyamory gets the same treatment. I’m a female (and worse, a mom!) with two male partners, lending me to even increased scrutiny of my sexuality, purity, expectation of my behavior, even from other non-conservative women. That internalized misogyny gotta go, friends. Stop asking me if my husband “is okay” with it. Stop being scandalized by my life. It might be unusual, but it isn’t scandalous.

I doubt legal polygamy has a chance in the near future despite how much it would help people out. There are fewer polyamorous people, and we have no great, mainstream depictions that seem to normalize it. As The New Yorker rightfully points out, the demand for polyamorous marriage WILL only increase in the coming years as more people believe that monogamy is no longer a necessity in marriage. I don’t know why this offends people — nobody will ever stop you from being monogamous; much like heterosexuality, as long as it is associated with procreation, it will remain the “default.” But there are positives, sincerely, for the alternative. Multiple incomes, more babysitters, and more equitable chore-sharing, anyone? And the alternative will continue to look appealing as long as we remain in the society that we do.

So, as uncomfortable as I feel speaking on the subject, yeah, maybe there should be polyamorous marriage. As it stands, I’m married to the man I’ve been with since I was an 18-year-old registered Republican who never even heard of polyamory and was ready to spend the rest of my life and vagina with one man, just like I was told that God intended. I have two children with him, and I will not be having more children with anyone, including my boyfriend. This is a good situation for my family in regard to taxes, hypothetical custody of my children if something happened to one of us, finances, and living arrangements.

But, what if something happened to both my spouse and myself? I like to believe with all sincerity that my family, and my spouse’s family, would understand that I desire my other partner — who has lived with my children 24/7 for over a year, and has known them and seen them for over three years — to have custody. He knows their schedules, their likes, their dislikes, their preferences. He’s kissed boo-boos and wiped away tears and boogers and vomit. He knows the parenting styles I prefer, he shares my political and spiritual beliefs, and he has been paying about half of their bills and can sustain their lives financially. He has had experience as a dad before in previous relationships. While I do not doubt the ability of my family members to raise my children (even though many of them live in Tennessee, and have not spent as much time with them as my partner) it simply isn’t my preference. My partner didn’t make just a commitment to me, he made a commitment to all of us, and he meant it.

I intend to spend the rest of my life with both my partner and my spouse, just as we are. But if something happened to my relationship with my spouse, he’d of course still have custody, financial support, and be an important, lifelong member of the family. The same goes for my partner — he would want to keep contributing to my children’s lives and seeing them. He loves them. The difference is that the court of law would only back up claims from my spouse, as their biological dad. My spouse, partner, and I have all discussed these hypothetical scenarios again and again, with therapists and with each other. We were nervous to enter into a multi-partner living situation on a whim, and we didn’t. It was a lot of conversation and consideration, and I like to think that if one of us ended our relationships in a romantic sense, it wouldn’t end the relationship in a personal sense. We kinda signed on for life.

Even in monogamous situations (like when a stepparent of many years divorces a parent whose kids they have helped raise but have no legal access to outside the relationship) it can be painful. I’d say, and hope, that most people are reasonable and kind… but I’ve seen that to not be the case. One of my friends lost access to his former wife’s children permanently after they got divorced despite the fact that he had been their primary caregiver, and a polyamorous friend lost access to a primary partner’s children after they split, never to see them again.

The New Yorker was careful to show all the similarities of the struggles between polygamous and polyamorous families, the custodial issues and the fights for rights that ultimately impact children the most. I remain hesitant to join the fight of conservative polygamists, who believe so much what I stand against: that women have no sexual drive or autonomy outside one partner but men do, that women have no or little place outside the home except to raise children and keep the house, that gender roles are firmly established, that sexuality is confined to Biblical literalism according to western philosophy and that’s it. It feels odd for me to run from fundamentalism kicking and screaming only to find myself alongside an even more fundamentalist, oppressive version of religion: one that allows men the same sort of sexual openness it would deny me using the Bible as the grounds to do so. Nah.

But even in those conservative polygamous scenarios, the children still deserve legal and financial protection in the only homes they have ever known. If the women decide to leave the men in those situations, often with very little education and no work experience, they deserve the right to pursue alimony and child support — women who aren’t legal spouses don’t currently have that right and custody issues can be fraught with complexities and pain. They often choose not to leave because they are told their children can be taken from them.

In polyamorous relationships without children, marriage is still an important institution if you are sharing living spaces, property, and finances. If one partner dies, a fight over finances or belongings might ensue — not even maliciously, but just out of uncertainty.

But couldn’t you just use legal documents to work through these issues? The way things are divided in wills at someone’s death for their children, someone could apply to their partners as well. But I have to remind people that legal documentation is somewhat of a privilege. Not everyone is educated, or has access or finances to even establish end-of-life documents. It’s complex and can be pricy, depending on what it is. The ability to marry multiple partners wouldn’t solve every issue individually, but it would simplify it somewhat. Partners would have equal legal standing for themselves and their children, especially if someone has children from more than one partner who are all being raised together. I think that’s important.

One of the most logical, common-sense arguments AGAINST polygamy (unrelated to the puritanical morals of what people expect relationships to look like) is, “Wouldn’t people just get married for no reason, or to help people attain legal immigration unnecessarily?” My knee-jerk reaction to that is “GOOD.” I don’t even believe in borders; ideologically I’m essentially a communist and I think sharing resources is wildly important and not letting hurting immigrants into our country is genocidal. But the realist in me says this: don’t they already check the so-called Green Card marriages of immigrants to ensure that people are really living together, are really sharing finances, are really in love? It wouldn’t be so difficult to continue that process, I assume.

Plus, with divorce still being a pricy, exhausting, and lengthy process — people still aren’t inclined to just jump into marriage for no reason. It is, and will continue to be for most people, a serious decision to consider marriage to another person. Who wants to go through MULTIPLE divorces as a polyamorous person? Millennials, my own generation, are actually pretty good about not jumping into marriages, and stay together longer. And I hope we have put to rest all the “Christian sanctity of marriage” arguments: divorce rates are at a steady 40-50% regardless of one’s religion. Anecdotally, many of the Christian people I know who got married young because we weren’t allowed to live together — like I did — are already divorced. I’m not, but obviously I have a very different marriage now than when I initially got married.

I want to marry my other partner, and I would marry my other partner. I love him, and we are committed. And sure, we could have a fake ceremony. Many of my other polyamorous friends have done so. But for my partner and I, it wouldn’t be about the ceremony. In fact, he’s a no-fuss, no-frills kind of guy. I doubt we’d even want one. We just want a paper that says if he dies, I get his shit, and if I die, he and my husband get my shit split halfway, and that he counts as a parent to my children, because he is. It would make me feel good to refer to both of them as my husbands — sometimes, I do anyway. (If I defer to the ever-polyamory-friendly “partner” it is a choice to equalize them both. Don’t ask me who my “real” husband is; don’t ask me who the “main” one is.)

Much like gay people in the ‘80s, not all polyamorous people desire marriage. Many find it a stifling concept, and if they didn’t come to polyamory already married like I did, they are unlikely to want to decide to join an institution built on choosing one person above all others for eternity (though, to be fair, many non-monogamous couples practice hierarchal polyamory or just have open relationships for sex and otherwise maintain a monogamish life) because it’s antithetical to everything they believe about love.

But I fail how to see giving people the option to marry more than one person would damage the institution of marriage, or change much about the practice of loving more than one person, no matter what kind of setting it’s in. I fail to see the downside of allowing people to marry more than one person. While I certainly live a radical, unconventional life in my relationships and in my politics, I crave normalcy as much as the average person does. I want all three of us to get emails from my children’s teachers. I want to introduce my partnerS without worrying what people will think. When I discuss my relationship with my partner, I don’t want people to assume I’ve left my husband. I can’t ask society to evolve faster than they already are (though I sure am trying) but I can ask that my boyfriend and I have the same exact kind of union in the eyes of the law as my husband and I do. And people would see that no, I’m not in all this just for the sex, and here’s proof. I want to ensure my other relationship is just as grounded and important and legally binding as my marriage. Maybe this isn’t a progressive political priority, and maybe it shouldn’t be.

I just know that it would mean a lot to me, and to a lot of us, and it would help evolve polyamory into a more stable, steady union. It would show an alternative for those of us who aren’t just here because we wanted to fuck more people. It would show that yes, we can be a family too. As much — and as normal — of a family as your family.