I want to share some thoughts on polygamy. But I want to begin by defining and separating it a bit from other forms of polyamory. Polyamory is ethical and consensual non-monogamy, that is, having multiple romantic relationships between two or more people. Polygamy comes from the Greek word polugamia which is a marriage to multiple spouses. It can refer to any mix of sexes or genders or sexual preferences. What separates it from polyamory is the idea of marriage. Polyamory is about all types of relationships while polygamy is referring specifically to those types of relationships that we would call marriages. Polygamy is a form of polyamory, both are forms of non-monogamy, but I’m comparing them in terms of dedication to ones partners. I want to say that there is nothing wrong with polyamory, with non polygamous relationships that involve multiple partners – if everyone is consenting, everyone is happy, than everything is good.
But, relationships without long-term commitments just don’t interest me. When I was younger I might have fallen into the polyamorous crowd had it been more common, but not these days. Today I want my partners for the long-haul. If I’m interested in you, than I’m interested in the rest of our lives together. I also speak strictly from the perspective of polygyny, that is one husband with multiple wives as the form of polygamy that I practice. But I think that my ideas would speak to pretty much any form of polygamy.
I think one of the biggest issues we have these days are those people (probably the vast majority of people actually) who equate polygamy with religious fundamentalism and cults. Mormon and Muslim fundamentalists cannot be allowed to be the ones who define modern polygamy. Not only because of how it affects the view of polygamy, but how it affects the larger polyamorous crowd in general. In this hyper-religious view of polygamy, one man is married to many women. These women usually do not consent to the man having additional wives, are often forced by their community or family into the marriage without consent, and quite often these same groups are engaging in the horrendous practice of child marriage. On the flip-side, we also cannot allow polygamy, polyamory, or alternative lifestyles in general, to be defined by the more mainstream fundamentalist and religious outlook that identifies traditional monogamy as the only acceptable form of relationship. The polygamy of fundamentalism is not the polygamy I live and write about. Religious fundamentalism-styled polygamy is more about coercion and forced values than about love, consent, sharing, mutual respect, and so on.
Along these same lines of who defines polygamy, I want to state that it is absolutely wrong to say that marriage exists solely for the purpose of child bearing, or that marriage is strictly a religious institution. It is also absolutely wrong to define marriage as strictly monogamous – that’s forcing a Christian perspective on people. Marriage is about love, a desire to share your life with another human being, it’s about choosing to be committed to someone. It is not about some religious commandment or the dictates of a one religion’s scriptures.
Love and Polygamy
One of those things that everyone in any type of polyamorous lifestyle has to deal with is people promoting the idea that loving someone new somehow detracts from their love of an already existing partner, the monogamous idea that you can only romantically love one person, but actually nothing could be further from the truth. Real love always enhances existing love. Think of love like a candle. A light in the darkness. If you light a second candle, it doesn’t diminish the first, it only adds more light to the darkness. Likewise, lighting a third and fourth. Every candle burns just as bright on its own, no candle is diminished by another, all we are doing is brightening the room. This is a description I once heard some years ago, sadly I cannot remember the source, but it is a wonderful example of how we should view love in the context of polyamory. People often wonder how you can love more than one person, have more than one romantic relationship, have more than one husband or wife, and love each of them. That type of statement has always baffled me. I mean, really?! That’s like asking how you can love more than one child, or more than one sibling, or more than one parent or grandparent. I have amazing in-laws and step-parents, but I don’t love my biological parents less because I love my mother-in-laws.
Carrying that idea a step further. If we loved someone less because we started to love someone else, wouldn’t the inverse then be true? If you love someone, then they are no longer there, do you love others more? If you love both your parents equally, then one passes away, do you then love the other more? Or, gods forbid, your children. If you have three kids and loose one tragically, do you love the others a third more? Of course not. Love is not something that is divisible, it only multiplies. It is, or it is not. You love someone, or you don’t.
If you meet and fall in love with someone and no longer love your previous partner, that wasn’t the fault of the new partner, nor is it the fault of the existing partner, that was a fault with you. Love is a choice, and you chose to prioritize loving one person more than, or to the the exclusion of, another. Polygamy allows for the fact that people can love one another without excluding their love, their attraction, to someone else. However, poly lifestyles are also NOT an excuse for cheating. You do not get to say you’re poly therefore you can have multiple partners without your spouses knowledge. Commitment doesn’t have to mean you’re being exclusive, it means you’re committed to that person. You can certainly be committed to more than one person, but it has to be an ethical commitment where everyone is equally knowledgeable about all partners. Polygamy for me means multiple wives, but each of them is a full partner in the relationship as well. Each of us has a full say in any one of the others seeing someone. Since we are married/involved only with one another, any relationship outside of our house would be cheating, and that is never acceptable. I’m not trying to hide someone, or sneak in a side piece. Polygamy is about a dedicated life-long relationship between multiple partners who love one another.
It’s also very important to note that polygamy/polyamory is not, nor will it ever be, a fix for a bad relationship. It can enhance and fill in voids that one partner may not be able to meet. It can add additional color to the already existing vivid array of hues that is your current relationship. But if you’re unhappy in your current relationship, exploring poly lifestyles is not a good idea. Fix yourself first or get out of your current relationship before you hurt someone.
Benefits of Polygamy
Exploring Sexuality
We further need to understand that loving one person doesn’t stop us from being attracted to other people. It is human nature to look, even to lust; that drive is what keeps us wanting to procreate, to keep the human race alive. It is an evolved biological imperative in all human beings that can be repressed, but never eliminated. Because we are human beings, we can choose to control those desires and keep things between partners. Refusing to acknowledge our natural inclinations toward enjoying the sight of beautiful people, or refusing to recognize that we can be attracted to other people, even when we are in a relationship that fully satisfies us, that is repression. Being in love with one person doesn’t blind us to everyone else, it’s obsessive-compulsive behavior that does that. Polygamy allows us to embrace loving more than one person in a supportive environment. But more than that, polygamy allows us to explore a sexuality that would be otherwise lost in a monogamous relationship.
Many people (personally I want to say way more than most will admit to) have sexual attractions to more than one gender/sex. That is, they may be bisexual or pansexual. In a monogamous relationship, that attraction and need to explore one’s sexuality has to be repressed. It has to be hidden away and denied in an effort to please the other partner and to remain faithful. This in turn may lead to an increase in cheating, or unhappiness and depression, or simply lost love. In a poly relationship there is no need to deny that sense of self, quite the opposite, with supportive and loving partners it can be fully explored and experienced in a safe and loving environment.
In a polygamous relationship, when three or more people ‘click’ and become long-term dedicated partners, it is a wonderful opportunity to be able to explore and maintain those sexual orientations safely and with the same partners on a daily basis, much as a monogamous couple does for one another.
Support Systems
One person cannot meet every need. This is kind of a basic fact, and in many ways, it’s why we have friends outside of our primary relationships. We may want someone who understands the trauma we went through in the past. We may want someone to play video games with. We may want to have other mothers to talk to about being a mom, or other fathers to turn to for advice with being a dad. Maybe you have outside relationships that revolve around religious beliefs, or political ones. Any of these things, and countless others, can be reasons to have friends outside of a primary relationship. But there may even be more reasons that border on intimacy, romance, or other desires.
Imagine having a partner that you love very much, but who does not enjoy the regular physical intimacy that you crave. You could spend your life not having something that makes you feel more complete, more needed, on a daily basis; in a poly relationship, it could be possible to have that need met in a second partner. There are many other examples, but I think the idea is clear.
Economics
But support systems extend beyond just immediate personal needs. Imagine needing to take extended time off to care for a family member but being unable to afford to if you live on your own or as a couple. With multiple partners there may be more available options, which leads us into the side of polygamy that most people avoid talking about – money. The simple truth in today’s world is that most couples (let alone single people) are incapable of living on a single income with any major degree of comfort. Many people will tell you that you should never marry for money, you’ll be unhappy, that you shouldn’t date people trying to find the rich, successful partner who will support you. And I agree, but to say money isn’t a factor in a relationship is to be in complete denial.
Let’s face facts, our world is becoming more and more expensive, and the price of living is vastly outpacing the wages any of us make. In a polygamous relationship we are increasing household incomes, when everyone works. This reduces the cost of housing, and other related expenses as they are split multiple ways. Yes, some expenses increase, water, food, etc., but usually on a scale that is less than most people realize; it takes little more to feed three adults than it does two. A house that two people struggle to pay for, becomes extremely affordable when split three or four ways. That being said, economics is not a sole reason for polygamy, or polyamory in general. People entering into relationships strictly for money is a guaranteed path to unhappiness and failure.
Even if it’s decided that one partner doesn’t work, that person is probably more domestically oriented and caring for the home while the others do work. While it might not be an immediate economic value, it is a tremendous stress reliever for those who are working to be able to come home to a clean house with meals prepared. And if there are children involved, to have a partner who cares for them while others work, does then become a major economic boon as childcare (especially quality private care) is particularly expensive.
Drawbacks of Polygamy
Jealousy
I don’t however want to make it sound like everything is easy in polygamy. There are constant struggles and difficulties, particularly in the beginning. And of all these challenges, jealousy is by far the biggest and most common that we have to deal with. At it’s most basic level, jealousy is a result of feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, fear of being replaced, or fear of loosing attention and affection. And while this is not the article for dealing with jealousy, there are ways to create safe spaces to address jealousy, and to improve communication for dealing with it.
One unfortunate aspect of monogamy has been the idea that jealousy is somehow okay in modern relationships. However, normalizing jealousy as an indicator of love is unhealthy. Jealousy is a normal human emotion. It’s perfectly okay to get jealous and we should never deny or hide it. A healthy form of jealousy might arise from the emotional concern that comes about when we perceive a potential threat to someone we love. But healthy jealousy can be talked through and dismissed as we recognize that the fear is not rational. Unhealthy jealousy however is rooted in suspicion, in insecurity, and tends to blind us to reality. It’s indicative of emotional injury and needs work. And when we try to say that it is normal and okay to be jealous, in a destructive manner, we are normalizing unhealthy relationships. Believe it or not, your insecurities are not your partners problems, although one hopes that a good partner will help to support you as you work through them.
Regardless, jealousy will arise in a polygamous relationship, and that is okay. It’s how you work through the jealousy that matters.
Time and Commitment
Time and Commitment is the next big challenge I see in polygamous relationships. What I’m talking about here is sharing reasonably equal time, and offering an equal amount of commitment, to each of your partners. Consider someone who is in a long-term relationship and then the couple takes on a second wife. Suddenly the man begins spending way more time with his new partner than with the existing one. Or the inverse happens and in order to not make an existing partner feel replaced you deliberately spend less time with your new partner. Both of which are wrong. Many polyamorous relationships are time-constrained, you may only seen one lover on an occasional basis. Polygamous relationships however are full-time dedicated relationships so time has to be balanced and shared equally. There will of course be periods where one partner may need more time than another, but these are things that we communicate.
Communication Challenges
Good communication is about actively listening, engaging with, and exchanging information with your partner, something many of us struggle with. It is all too easy to be that person who likes to interrupt or disregard feelings, particularly during those challenging conversations. Now imagine adding a second or third partner, it becomes much more difficult to be a good communicator. In a polygamous relationship, for you to be successful and happy, you will have to master communication.
But along with the effort to become a better communicator, you have to find ways to understand and address the non-verbal cues of a new partner, to learn to be accepting of failures to communicate and be willing to work through the inevitable breakdowns in communication that will happen between groups of human beings. Think about it, you’re not just dealing with breakdowns in communication between yourself and a partner, but between yourself and a second (or more partner), between those partners, and between all of you simultaneously. It’s an exponential increase in potential issues that requires an equal amount of effort applied to avoid catastrophe. This is why every successful polygamous relationship is so different from the normal monogamous ones- they are spending a tremendous amount of time sitting and talking face-to-face, as opposed to just the casual conversation in front of the TV while eating dinner type of talking, that most people consider communication.
Polygamy and the Law
Sadly, polygamy is illegal everywhere in the United States. There have been some minor advancements toward making it legal, for example Utah in 2020 passed a law to decriminalize polygamy reducing it from being a felony to a minor infraction (something like a traffic ticket) that is basically no longer enforced. However, in states like California, bigamy (the legal act of marrying a second person while still married to another) is considered a “crimes against nature” and punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and a year in jail, though I can find no recent instances of it being enforced except where the bigamy occurs between non-consenting adults involving annulments and/or contested divorces (in other-words, it isn’t really polygamy, it’s cheating). Unfortunately, despite the strides we have made toward a true separation of church and state, toward a more secular government and law, we still live under the burdensome restrictions of Christian theonomy and it’s influences on our society. So modern polygamy is more a matter of long-term commitment than legal marriage. In some households, celebrants may use handfastings as a from of modern marriage equivalent, but legally there is no standing. It is my sincere hope that this changes in the near future, but for now, just love and be good to one another.
All of this being said, in no way, shape, or form, am I discounting the importance of monogamy or or the place of mainstream relationships. There is this really bad habit in parts of the polyamorous community to disparage monogamy, and so-called ‘traditional’ relationships, which is just wrong. I want to see people happy and in love. And if the shape of that is monogamy, polygamy, polyamory, who cares. Just be you. Take care of your partner(s), take care of yourself. Be a good person to everyone around you.