World Polyamory Association

Create & Enhance Conscious Polyamorous Relations

Join us in an intensive, playful, entertaining, active, respectful, informative participatory sharing, learning opportunity for networking and celebrating polyamorous conclave consciousness for a weekend.

Friday, July 13, 2011 at 12:00pm – Sunday, July 14, 2011 at 10:00pm

HARBIN HOT SPRINGS CONFERENCE CENTER
Middleton, Northern California
www.harbin.org

Play, share multi-lover interests:
*Vet potential lovers
*Experience polygroup relationship negotiation & lovemaking techniques
*Manage jealousy
*Ponder polyactivism, group marriage, child custody, group housing
*Enjoy poly-oriented music
*Participate in and react to panel discussions
*Peruse poly films
*Join a poly-tantra ritual
*Commit to Your Poly Relationship in a Ritual Before the Poly Community
*Celebrate the party of the year

This year we are in our favorite venue, Harbin’s Conference Center. It’s our private, gated, sex-positive celebrative community, complete with its own huge group room, breakaway areas, two hot pools and camping area. Harbin Caterers dish up yummy food. Camp, sleep in a group room or your RV.

PARTICPANTS REGISTER NOW!

Single Men – $375.00
Single Women – $325.00
Couple/Pair – $625.00
Triad/Three – $975.00
Quattrad/Four – $1200.00

Participants Options

Single Man $375.00 USD Single Woman $325.00 USD Couple/Pair $625.00 USD Triad $975.00 USD Foursome $1,200.00 USD

Monogamish Couples Share Their Stories By Dan Savage • January 6, 2012

From : http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/42014/savage-love-monogamish-couples-share-their-stories/

Why do most people assume that all nonmonogamous relationships are destined to fail? Because we only hear about the ones that do. If a three-way or an affair was a factor in a divorce or breakup, we hear all about it. But we rarely hear from happy couples who aren’t monogamous, because they don’t want to be perceived as dangerous sex maniacs who are destined to divorce.

This state of affairs—couples who experimented with nonmonogamy and wound up divorced won’t shut up; couples who experimented with nonmonogamy and are still together won’t speak up—allows smug and insecure monogamists to run around insisting that there’s no such thing as happy, stable monogamish couples.

“You know lots of couples who have had three-ways and flings who aren’t divorced,” I told the skeptics a few weeks ago, “you just don’t know you know them.” In an effort to introduce the skeptics to some happily monogamish couples, I invited coupled people who’d had successful flings, affairs, three-ways, and swinging experiences to write in and share their stories. The response was overwhelming—I may write a book—and I’m turning over the rest of this week’s column to their stories. —Dan

My husband and I have issues like any couple, but I still smile when I see him walk into a room, and he still takes my hand when we’re walking down the street. For the past seven years, we have been “monogamish.” It started off with a discussion of “If you ever cheat on me and it’s a one-time thing, I wouldn’t want to know.” Then, when he turned 40, we had a threesome with a female friend. When I actually saw him “in the moment,” I didn’t have the jealous feelings I had always feared. There is no question that our relationship is our first priority, but just the possibility of a little strange now and then makes him feel like a stud. (And I reap the benefits!) I don’t much care for sex without emotion and affection, so my flings have been rather limited. We haven’t told our families or more than a couple of friends. I don’t want to deal with the judgment of others.

For the first five years of my marriage, everything was great: lots of sex, both GGG, lots of love. Then my wife’s libido failed. Whatever the problem was, she couldn’t articulate it. After a year where we’d had sex twice, I reached out to someone else. I used Craigslist and I was honest: I explained that I had no intention of leaving my wife and that I was looking for someone in a situation similar to mine. It took months to find the right person. We struck up a years-long affair. At the same time, I had a wonderful-yet-sexless marriage. Then, after nearly four years, a strange thing happened: My wife’s libido came back strong. To this day, she cannot explain why it left or why it came back. With the reason for my affair gone, I ended things with my fuck buddy. And you know what? Years of honest talk made this easy. She understood; we went our separate ways.

So I had a four-year affair without getting caught. Here’s how I pulled it off: I never told anyone about it ever, I chose a partner who wanted exactly what I wanted, we didn’t film ourselves (as hot as that sounded), we used condoms, I kept my computer clear of any evidence, and we never called or texted each other.

My husband and I are monogamish but also LMGs—legally married gays. We feel tremendous pressure to be perfect. The thing is, we are perfect. We love each other, we support each other, and we have amazing sex with each other—and the occasional cameo performer, who is always treated with respect. (We have a rule about not inviting someone into our bedroom who we wouldn’t be friends with outside the bedroom.) That said, the fact that Ron and Nancy down the street are swingers will raise eyebrows, but it won’t impact the perceived legitimacy of mixed-gender marriage. But if Ed and Ted happen to invite a third into their bedroom, that would prove the gays are destroying marriage/the country/the fabric of the universe. Even other gays get judgmental. So, at least for now, our monogamishness is on a strictly need-to-know basis. And who needs to know? Just our sex-positive doctor and the occasional hot third who gets a golden ticket into our bedroom.

I agree with you that we rarely hear about successful marriages that are open. How do I know? I just discovered that my parents are swingers—and they have been married for 26 years!

My husband, almost exactly 10 years older than me, confessed a cuckold fetish to me shortly before our fifth anniversary. I said no, but a seed was planted: Whenever I would develop a crush on another man, it would occur to me that I could sleep with him if I wanted to. Five years later, my boyfriend of two years, who happens to be exactly 10 years younger than me, was one of the guests at our 10-year anniversary party. My boyfriend is a good-looking grad student who adores me and values my husband’s advice about his education and career plans. He treats my husband with the perfect blend of affection and contempt. (“Gratitude and attitude,” my boyfriend calls it.) I enjoy my boyfriend, but I love my husband more than ever. My husband is not allowed to have sex with other women (he doesn’t want to, anyway), and he’s not allowed to have sex with me without my boyfriend’s permission (which he usually—though not always—gets). Our families would be appalled. We simply don’t live in a part of the country, or move in social circles, where we could be honest about any of this with anyone.

From the outside, my husband and I look like a boring, vanilla, married couple. In fact, people have included me in judgmental conversations about open relationships. But the truth is, for nearly as long as we’ve been together (three-plus years), we’ve had a semiopen relationship. My husband is bi. When he told me after a few months of dating, years of Savage Love reading helped me to keep an open mind. Long story short: We worked out rules that were mutually agreeable. Now he can hook up safely with guys and come home to a loving wife with whom he can be completely honest.

I’m a happily married woman…and so is my girlfriend. Maybe it’s cowardly of us, but no matter how simple our relationship seems to us, the people we care about would not understand. Yes, we do this with our husbands’ blessing. (We even double-date from time to time!) No, there’s nothing lacking in our marriages. Our parents, relatives, children, friends, and coworkers know we’re close. But I don’t see the need to tell anyone the entire truth. I was on the fence about sending this email—that’s how little fuss we make about it. Then I thought, if I do send it, and if enough people send their stories, maybe one day we can go public and it won’t be a big fucking deal. That’d be awesome.

Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

THE ROLE NON-MONOGAMY WILL PLAY IN THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE by Rachel R. White in The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/10/the-role-non-monogamy-will-play-\in-the-future-of-marriage/245960/

Contrary to its “sanctity,” marriage has changed over time in both perception and practice. Even the Bible was once suspicious of marriage — it was seen as more holy to be celibate, and, in many cultures throughout time, polygamy is the preferred relationship model. Women have also been sold from father to husband.

But perhaps most shockingly, monogamy hasn’t always been central to American marriages as Pamela Haag, author of the book Marriage Confidential, explains in this interview about the institution’s future — and the role non-monogamy is already playing.

What are the “secretly transgressive” marriages you describe in your book?

If you’re at a cocktail party with 20 married couples, chances are, one or two are in openly non-monogamous marriages. They’re the marriage next door. They pay the bills, go to Little League games, recycle — and maybe on the weekend go on swinging holidays.

Have the rules of monogamy in marriage always been so strict?

The 1950s — a so-called golden era of “family values” — was more tolerant of covert affairs than the 1980s. This was more true for husbands than for wives, but not entirely. Kinsey found in his research that a fair percentage of wives had affairs too.

In the 1950s there was a fair amount of “wink, wink” tolerance for a gap between the monogamy ideal and reality. The conservative 1980s were more about regulating behavior; religious social conservatives not only wanted us to act as if we were monogamous, they wanted us to be monogamous. Monogamy became a stricter social ethic.

But the reality is that a fair number of spouses cheat, and we forbid cheating. So, we end up with what I call the “shocking banality” of infidelity: It happens all the time and we’re shocked by it all the time.

When did we begin to see an opening up of non-monogamy in marriage?
My argument is that in the 1970s free love and non-monogamy had a certain chic to them, but they didn’t have solid foundations in demography, economy, or technology.

Today, the idea of openly non-monogamous marriages has no political chic to it, but it does have a more solid foundation in demography (we live longer and are healthier than ever), economy (women earn their own paycheck, and don’t rely on the sexual contract in marriage for their meal ticket), and technology (we’re connected to people more than ever).

So marital monogamy is under greater stress today. And I think it’s being deliberately rethought and re-evaluated by a post-romantic generation that sees the main function of marriage as friendship, an establishment of a home base — not sexual passion and fidelity, per se.

In the past, people married for money, order, family, and having babies. Today we seem more apt to say we marry for love. Yet statistics show we marry in our own social class and race. What are we really marrying for?

Today we are more inclined to marry partners than lovers. The majority of unmarried Americans say they want to marry a soul mate, according to Gallup research. It’s an interesting goal, because it’s not specifically a romantic love that we’re envisioning. “Soul mate” can apply to any number of relationships, from friend to colleague to spouse. Maybe we want marriages that are intimate, but not romantic.

From what I understand, more people are marrying their best friend, but this does not bode well for marriages. That best friend/spouse is expected to be all things for us.

Men and women have the same opportunities and life experiences more than ever before; we’re more similar and comradely toward each other. All of those things are victories, and upsides of feminism. The bad news is that a marriage today can slide too much into a partnership or a co-parenting arrangement, and lose the intimacy that comes from a sense of mystery or difference.

How does non-monogamy fit into the future of marriage?

More marriages will have a conversation about monogamy, rather than just assuming it is the default. It seems to me that non-monogamy might become a more accepted option, much as premarital sex has shifted from largely scorned to widely tolerated today.

In my book, I look at the entire gamut of extramarital sex — from conventional cheating to “affair tolerators” who look the other way to monogamy “agnostics” who don’t care as much about marital monogamy as they thought they would to deliberately open, ethically non-monogamous marriages and even “asexual” marriages, where one or both spouses really doesn’t have an interest in sex.

It’s funny that historically, there were more models for non-monogamy — even if it was the mistress model.

I wonder how our views would be different if we had a social recognition for those historically honored roles of mistress and lover. If these roles were more integrated socially, we’d be less inclined to mistake lust or romantic attachment with “true love” — and bolt for divorce court when an affair happens. I like to entertain the idea of a revival of the mistress and lover
roles in society.

The Wall Street Journal recently published a trend story claiming that fewer people are divorcing because divorce would mean a failure. I got the sense this was among the kids who grew up with the family values of the 1980s.

More affluent, better-educated Americans are getting and staying married than less affluent Americans. I think this is happening in part because we have a Type A desire to succeed, and this applies to marriage as to everything else.

Whereas in the 1970s there was a certain admiration attached to getting divorced and fulfilling your dreams and “personal growth,” we grew up in the 1980s, when the family values retrenchment was going strong.

Also, some of these spouses grew up in divorced families themselves. I encountered more than one husband or wife who had vowed never, ever to do that to their own children. In my own survey for my book, I found that 33 percent of respondents agreed that “even if you’re unhappy, you should stick it out for the children.” That’s up from 20 percent in a 1970 survey.

How are things different for younger generations, such as my own, who largely grew up in the ’90s early ’00s?

The younger generation that grew up in the 1990s is vastly more connected. It’s my guess that your generation won’t have the same expectation that a marriage should be the world to them. I think there will be more tolerance for having a range of intimate relationships and friendships, and a greater understanding
that it’s not a marital failure if you seek different things from different relationships. I also sensed that the younger generation has more pragmatic views of marriage, even more than my generation.

Is marriage on the way out?

Forty percent of Americans think that marriage is “becoming obsolete,” and 50 percent of younger Americans believe this, according to 2010 Pew research. I think that marriage is in a brainstorming phase. It’s trying to find its footing in the new realities of the 21st century. It seems to me that we still believe
in marriage — we still want to give it a try — but the reality is, we don’t always do it according to spec. We’re improvising.

The bottom line is that I think both arrangements are challenging. It’s challenging to have a non-monogamous, committed relationship; it’s challenging to have a monogamous, committed relationship. Forever is a long time. It pays to be flexible.

Beyond Bodies by Janet Kira Lessin, Chief Focalizer, World Polyamory Association

Nothing like a good old-fashioned polyamory conference to learn how to stretch your wings and move beyond your boundaries. While most times I like to believe I’m rather progressive, open-minded and think outside of the box, polyamory conferences tend to tax my limits, open my eyes and make me look at myself and see where I still judge, evaluate, reject, project, attract and repulse.

Since I put on the World Polyamory Association Conference, by the time I arrive at the Stan Dale Conference Center at Harbin Hot Springs, N. CA, I’m usually a bit frazzled. I hold space for others who come excited to learn, grow, evolve and for some, make connections and find friends, family, lovers, soul mates and/or tribe. For me, at first, I just want to get through registration without incidents, and after all have shown up (for some reason they never come all at once but tend to filter in), I get to relax and enjoy the conference. One step at a time.

This conference was transcendental for me. I was challenged on all levels and was able to face my preconceived notions, prejudices, fears, limitations, projections and reservations and overcome them and rise to greater highs.

This process was not without the intensity of extreme emotions, highs and lows, for myself and some of the others who attended, for whom I held space often at my own expense, to a degree, as I contained myself long enough to hear and bear witness for them, allowing them to fully cathart and express.
Most of us reprogrammed ourselves on a cellular level in numerous ways. We rewrote the books on relationships and interpersonal sharing. I’m still deciphering it all and it’s more than a month later, and I’m still de-constructing and evaluating it all. The score card is heavily leaning on the “good” side and when it’s all said and done, it seems the tally will peak all the way into the “excellent” side of the continuum.

My friend D led the way, all the way. A transgendered woman, she’s the bravest person I’ve ever known. She’s strong, has a lot of confidence, a wonderful personality, is full of love. She taught all of us that love knows no bounds, has no physical limits and is best embraced when offered.

Her path challenged some. But for others it broke barriers, especially when involving attractions and realizing some things just don’t fit into a gender box.

Everyone at the conference allowed themselves to go to new depths of intimacy, transparency and honesty. We shared on deep levels and by the end of the conference, there was plenty mixing and matching in all kinds of configurations. We were all engaged, involved in some deep, organic process that propelled us upward to higher and higher heights and allowed us to love, be it intimately or in friendship. We all came to love each other, in that now, and realized love continues beyond bodies, time and space and exists forever once found.

Sure there were sexpectations aplenty. Never a lack of those at any conference (or dating site for that matter). But over the years I’ve learned to relax with such things and appreciate them as the compliments they’re intended to be. Wants and desires do not constitute requirements, attractions or needs. They require no action or even acknowledgment, although that’s sometimes nice to do. Love is always a two way street. And if it doesn’t flow both ways, then it’s not a match and no one’s fault nor need for apologies.

Love doesn’t mean you “f*ck everything that moves, but does mean you consider what’s offered with love and sensitivity, being fully aware that those who dared be so bold, brave and vulnerable, do so in order to make connections with others, and through love and intimacy (especially sexual intimacy), find parts of themselves they’d otherwise never know.

I reunited with a long-distance lover. We see each other every year at the conference. And he and his live-in beloved come to visit us now and again. Reconnecting after time apart is always an interesting dance for me. I’ve been socially conditioned to build up intimacy, especially sexual intimacy, over time and that involves feeling connected. For me feeling connected involves a degree of familiarity and proximity.

I realize some can do long distance relating better than others. I’m best in relationship when I have daily contact. So reconnecting can be a challenge for me. I get shy.

Yes, shy. After all these years and at my age, I get shy. So I needed a place where I could feel we had some privacy, space away from the crowds. So S created space for me. He erected a tent out of the way. And late on a Saturday night when the moon was full (how romantic) we went off to make love. My husband was long asleep, exhausted from the day’s duties as MC. He blessed us and wished us well. Same with S’s beloved who was off on a date with someone else.

How sweet. Lovely. Better than expected (yes, I keep layering life with expectations no matter how hard I try). I have resistance then I go with it and it’s very exciting, fun, joyous to love those whom you love. My emotional state is always there. I tend to love whom I love and direct contact and time together doesn’t seem to be that much of a factor when it comes to love. And I recognize that as a poly person, I do have my favorites, those with whom I have more in common or whose personalities I like more than others.

I think to say we feel exactly the same about everyone we’re involved with polyamorously may not ring true for all. So equal love probably shouldn’t be an expectation. Although I avoid shoulds anyway, as they frequently lead to disappointments.

I just notice what is and allow. I know that almost sounds like a new age cliche’. But what can you really do? We feel what we feel. We have emotions that defy explanation. We don’t have to act on every one of them, especially the “negative” ones for we can affect so many in so many ways.

For me polyamory’s about getting conscious and being open, aware, honest, up front with what you want, desire and need and allow your friends, family, lovers and the Universe to deliver those things to you. It’s pretty simple. It tends to work. We get in our own way with so many rules.

Yet somehow, deep in our core, we are polyamorous. The dogma of our Judeo-Christian social lives complicates the matter and then we spend most of our lives unraveling and reprogramming to get back where we started as souls before we were born.

Back home a month after the conference Sasha and I are back in our daily lives. For those who follow our story, Shivaya came back to us in August of 2010 and left again a month later. He briefly connected with my best friend, K. Then they rejected each other and dreams shattered, he was gone, once again. Perhaps this time it’s for good.

But I still love him. Love and involvement are two different things. I just wish our Ego Selves could get along better, work out our relationship dynamics and make it work. I do wish him well wherever he goes. And he’s an excellent lover, so there’s some lucky ladies out there (probably not just one knowing him) who are in for a real treat. I love you Shivaya. Kiss, kiss, love wherever you are.

Nature adhors a vacuum. Some old poly friends who went inward for healing from cancer are coming back for a visit next week. Their visit may prompt visit from others in our extended, global poly family. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a good old fashioned poly love-in, a gathering of the tribe, our pod, a group that loves each other to the core but can’t quite decide who’s supposed to be zooming who?

Much to our surprise, we have reason to celebrate. Two of our poly friends, K and P found love and are now in a relationship. K is my best female friend who left our community with Shivaya, my ex husband, over a year ago. K has come into her own and is blossoming and doing extremely well here in Maui. She’s landed in a sub-community of the greater new-age Maui community that’s open and accepting of polyamorous relationships. She was suffocating before where she lived on the mainland in a monogamous relationship that no longer fit her soul.

K found P, a long term poly who’s led the movement for over 40 years. I would have never put them together in my mind. They seemed so different, I never imagined them a match. But somehow now that they’re relating, it seems so perfect. And I’m happy, smiling ear to ear. Compersion’s grand. I highly recommend it. Happy endings for all.

The next few weeks may deliver a lot of love, surprises and experiences. I’m open, happy for each breath I get to breathe. I have no expections! Well at least part of me doesn’t. I’m learning, getting there, still growing, ever evolving.

We experience the ebb and flow of relationships throughout our lives. When I let go of requirements and expectations, love feels so natural with all beings. My sexual nature is still somewhat a mystery. I can only open to a select few due to programming, I suppose. And there’s divinity in that, which I acknowledge.

But now and again, a match made is heaven is remembered. Once I go into a tantric surrender with my beloveds, our souls rejoice, a reunion born of love that transcends pain of imagined separations and allows us to play yet another day.

***
Janet Kira Lessin, author of “Polyamory, The Poly-Tantra Lovestyle” availale at

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000358122/Polyamory-Many-Loves.aspx://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000358122/Polyamory-Many-Loves.aspx

  

August 16, 2011

Dear Abby: Should Triad Come Out to Family?

Up to 1,400 newspapers

When poly triads and quads first began seeing their inquiries taken seriously by newspaper advice columnists, it was truly a big deal. Here we were being recognized in public as actually existing; millions of people were reading, with their eggs and toast, that poly relationships are actually possible and happening in the real world.

Now that this kind of attention is becoming almost commonplace, it hardly seems like news. But yes it is, and yes it really matters.

This week, huge numbers of newspapers are about to print the following from Dear Abby, supposedly the most widely syndicated newspaper columnist in the world:

Woman with husband and lover wants one big happy family

By Abigail Van Buren

Dear Abby: Sometime ago, you printed a letter from one of your readers who was upset over her son’s polyamorous relationship. I didn’t respond then, but now that my triad is ready to come out to my boyfriend’s family (we are out to mine and to my husband’s family), I feel the need to address this lifestyle in your column and ask your advice.

My husband and I have been together 10 years. We started out as swingers. When we met my now-boyfriend, it became apparent that it was going to be more serious than “play” partners. Our particular arrangement is a “V” triad, meaning I am involved with two (husband and boyfriend), but they are not involved with each other.

My boyfriend is extremely important to us in every way. We all work together to make a very smooth-running, loving household.

I want you and your readers to know that this IS a viable relationship with love, respect and, most important, open communication. This kind of relationship — or any, for that matter — is doomed without it.

An estimated half-million people in the United States are part of polyamorous relationships. We’re not freaks in need of counseling, but people who realize that love can grow and that there is an alternative to monogamy.

Abby, I would like to get some tips from someone who doesn’t readily accept this life or even know it’s out there. My boyfriend’s family is conservative and they know he lives with a married couple. We’ve all spent time together, and I think they like me. Of course, they don’t know I’m romantically involved with their son.

What’s the best way to tell them about our triad? We want them to know this isn’t the end of the world and that I love him very much. I’d appreciate any advice from you or your readers on this. Until we’re out of the closet, please sign me…

Nowhere And Everywhere

Dear N And E: Because you’re looking for input from someone who “doesn’t readily accept this life,” you have come to the right place. You didn’t say how long your boyfriend has been living with you and your husband, but if it has been any length of time and his parents know he isn’t involved with anyone else, it’s possible they already have some suspicions.

Because they are conservative, if I were you I wouldn’t shatter their illusions. I can almost guarantee they won’t embrace you for it. If you feel you MUST disclose the information, then do it in the same way that you have explained it to me. But don’t expect them to jump for joy.

Here’s a typical newspaper appearance (Aug. 16, 2011). Join the comments; they’ve just begun. And here’s her official site.

Why is this a big deal?

Because according to her syndication service, Dear Abby is the most widely syndicated newspaper columnist in the world…. Abby commands a client list of about 1,400 newspapers worldwide, and a daily readership of more than 110 million people.

Abby receives more than 10,000 letters and e-mails per week… has appeared as an expert on all major networks, including ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC… uses her column not only to entertain, but also to educate. In the U.S., public and private middle schools use her column to teach sex education and generate classroom discussion on a variety of subjects; the same is true in colleges and universities…. Dear Abby is used by educators worldwide as a teaching tool in adult level ESL (English as a Second Language)….

Every Web site mentioned in Dear Abby receives an immediate onslaught of viewers, and organizations mentioned are routinely encouraged to gear up to accept millions of hits….

Reply by World Polyamory Association 43 minutes ago
Delete Polyamory’s huge, getting bigger every day. There have always been polyamorous relationships. Polyamory is in the most ancient writings, from Sumer to the Bible to current times, people have always loved who they love. In more recent times moral values changed and a part of our society has found it necessary to go underground. But anyone who looks at what’s actually going on, studies DNA and the internet will soon come to the conclusion that many are not monogamous. Few marry only one person for life. Even fewer have only one sex partner their entire life.

Time for a reality check. Time to honor what is and stop making people feel bad for doing what comes naturally. It’s natural for nature to diversity its gene pool. Genetic studies show there are few if any animal species that are monogamous.

There are ways to love that honors all involved, that move past lying, cheating. Infidelity hurts. Honesty shows respect for all involved, all the way around.

Support relationship choice, whatever your personal choice may be. We tend to shift throughout life based on necessity and circumstances. Allow a natural flow, for yourself, your friends, family, co-workers, community members. Love is the answer. Love is the high road to living a conscious life.

Please contact us at www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com, email: worldpolyamory@aol.com, 808-244-4103. I recommend you attend a conference, network, go to local poly support groups. Honor yourself.

July 1, 2011
New York Times Magazine on nonmonogamy for stronger marriage

New York Times Sunday Magazine

My last post was about an article in one of New York City’s alt weekly papers on how queer and poly partnerships can set a good example for straight marriage. Tomorrow morning, a much bigger fish will land on vast numbers of serious doorsteps: the Sunday New York Times, with its magazine section featuring a 5,400-word cover story on the same topic, but explored in greater depth. The title on the cover: “Infidelity Keeps Us Together.”

The article is built around a profile of gay writer Dan Savage and his increasingly influential philosophy of honest marital nonmonogamy. The article’s author, a religion writer, suggests that Savage’s outlook was shaped by his Catholic roots — with his pro-family sentiments, pontifical style, and stark moral clarity.

Married, With Infidelities
By MARK OPPENHEIMER

…Although best known for his It Gets Better project, an archive of hopeful videos aimed at troubled gay youth, Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

“I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold… But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.

…Savage is not a churchgoer, but he is a cultural Catholic. Listeners to “This American Life,” which since 1996 has aired his homely monologues about his family, might recognize the kinship of those personal stories to the Catholic homilies Savage heard every Sunday of his childhood. Less a scriptural exegesis, like what you get in many a Protestant church, the priest’s homily is often short and framed as a fable or lesson: it’s an easily digested moral tale. You can hear that practiced didacticism in his radio segments about DJ, the son that he and Terry Miller, his husband, adopted as an infant…

…It Gets Better is, in the end, a paean to stable families: it is a promise to gay youth that if they can just survive the bullying, they can have spouses and children when they grow up….

How, then, can Savage be a monogamy skeptic?… Today, Savage Love is less a sex column than a relationship column, one point of which is to help good unions last….

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

In their own marriage, Savage and Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about…. “And far from it being a destabilizing force in our relationship, it’s been a stabilizing force. It may be why we’re still together.”

…If you believe Savage, there is strong precedent, in other times and in other cultures, for nonmonogamous relationships that endure. In fact, there has recently been a good deal of scholarship proving that point, including Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s “Sex at Dawn,” one of Savage’s favorite books, and Stephanie Coontz’s definitive “Marriage, a History.” Like Savage, Coontz says she believes that “people often end up exploding a relationship that was working well because one partner strays or has an affair that doesn’t mean anything.”

But, she says, we are to some extent trapped in our culture… “I think you can combine a high tolerance of flings with a de-emphasis on jealousy in long-term relationships,” Coontz said, “but usually that is only in societies where friendships and kin relationships are as emotionally salient as romantic partnerships.”

…It was not until the 20th century that Americans evolved an understanding of marriage in which partners must meet all of each other’s needs: sexual, emotional, material. When we rely on our partners for everything, any hint of betrayal is terrifying. “That is the bind we are in,” Coontz said. “We accord so much priority to the couple relationship. It is tough under those conditions for most people to live with the insecurity of giving their partners permission to have flings.”…

Mark Oppenheimer (mark.oppenheimer@nytimes.com) writes the Beliefs column for The Times….

Those are just a few bits; read the whole long article (first published online June 30, 2011). Already there are hundreds of comments, prompting a commentary on them on the Times’s own blogsite.

Mr. Trendspotter here thinks he spots a trend. Savage calls it being “monogamish,” others call it “the New Monogamy” — but the idea of bolstering a marriage’s durability (or hoping to!) by negotiating a degree of openness looks to be an upcoming trend.

Some polyfolks say it’s ridiculous to call nonmonogamy “the New Monogamy.” But Michael Rios, one of the wisest people I know, has this to say about that:

This is exactly how to get a new idea across to a resistant mainstream population. You simply tell them that it is really the same thing as what they already know, but with an extra accessory that they hadn’t known about before.

If we can get the mainstream society to think of monogamy as inclusive of multiple sexualoving relationships, we’re there. I could care less what they call it, as long as it incorporates all the elements I care about.

Other media have been commenting on the article; for instance. And there are have been counter-arguments from the thoughtful to the fanatical.

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Labels: marriage

ALL WAR WILL ENDS WHEN WE END WAR BETWEEN THE GENDERS by Dieter Duhm

An essential part of the coming elevation of consciousness is the new role of the woman in human society. Neural changes will reveal collective patterns in female thinking and action which were present in highly developed archaic societies and which today return on a new level. It concerns a reconnection with the female source and female authority. To make the woman governable and compliant for patriarchy, her connection to the source had to be severed, her ancient sanctuaries destroyed, her natural relation to all co- creatures severed and her sexual wild nature domesticated. The sexual potency of a man could only unfold towards suppressed women. These structures still exist and resist all attempts at reform as long as their core is not recognised. They are a part of the collective trauma. It is in the nature of the present transformation that more and more women recognise these connections and no longer react with hatred and revenge. We see that within a few years a new women’s field will extend over the Earth, in which women rediscover their entelechial role in creation and with gentle force break open their hardened structures to create new fields of power for love and for solidarity with all that lives. Men will experience the miracle of female acceptance and take off their macho costumes. They will no longer go to war. Maybe this is the deepest point that we can foresee: ALL WAR WILL BE ENDED BY ENDING THE HISTORICAL WAR BETWEEN THE GENDERS. We will experience these things in the first half of the twenty-first century.

CONCLUSION

All these processes together lead to a basic paradigm shift in our thinking and actions. Science, religion, art and Eros, urban development, technology and ecology will look fundamentally different at the end of the twenty-first century than what they are at its beginning. The whole process brings light to bodily existence and the material world, which had become too dense. Now it is becoming more permeable, more transparent and more subtle. This is true for all matter, also for the human body. An ancient wisdom is revealing itself: the material world is not only ruled by physical energies but also by energies of the geist and soul, and can therefore be changed through geist. Humankind will become able to quickly and easily change material structures by the power of thought. A new movement for research and limitless discoveries is beginning, comparable with contemporary computer development. Bodies are no longer heavy because of the old trauma. Love has become a universal power. Its frequencies heal old wounds. The collective “no” to the impulses of life, originating from the long historic war will be replaced by a collective “yes”. The collective amnesia will be dissolved by a collective process of remembering. Humankind will return to its common source on a higher level: to the deep connection with all that lives. Towards the one. As God acts in the connection of all beings.

The date 2012 also stands for the unification of powers of consciousness which so far could not find connection. As part of this trend towards unity, cosmic powers will connect with Earthly powers, powers of the geist with powers of the body, Marian powers with sexual powers, Christ powers with political powers, scientific powers with mythological powers, technical powers with powers of the art. From such new connections, those structures so far named “dissipative structures” by science will arise: new previously unknown compositions and syntheses. A new planetary community will develop from the synergy of the streams, consisting of many different elements of the Earth’s inhabitants. The movement is already taking place. It consists of a connection between Eastern mysticism and Western science, Hopis and Europeans, shamans and modern hi-tech specialists, and between musicians in Sao Paolo, Lisbon, Jerusalem and Tamera. Very soon, places will develop on Earth where the models for a new planetary culture will arise from such connections. The information of such models will be spread over the Earth and lead to the establishment of many new centres. We see a shining network of such establishments across the Earth already by 2020, in which the foundations will definitely be laid for a new world without fear or war.

Let us work together for a new vision of the post-apocalyptic time. A new Earth is actually in preparation. We thank you in the name of all fellow beings for your collaboration.

For more information, please contact:
Institute for Global Peacework (IGP) Tamera, Monte do Cerro P-7630-303 Colos Portugal

Ph: +351 283 635 484 Fax: +351 283 635 374 eMail: info@dieter-duhm.de
http://www.dieter-duhm.de
—

Related video:’Beyond 2012′ by Dieter Duhm
<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGEKtbpywAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGEKtbpywA”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGEKtbpywA</a>

<iframe title=”YouTube video player” width=”560″ height=”349″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/hSGEKtbpywA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Polys of the world unite;
You’ve nothing to loose but limitations, nothing to shed but isolation;
Everything to gain in love, intimacy, intensity and growth.
Terminate monotonous monogamy; arrest atrocious age-ism;
Stop sexist stifling, renounce pernicious racism;
Celebrate relationship choice and give more loving a voice.
The love you take is equal to the love you make.

(inspired by John Lennon, Marx, Engles)

LEGALIZE POLYAMOROUS UNIONS; PROTECT OUR KIDS FROM KIDNAPPING BY THE MATRIX MANIPULATORS.

We demand ALL the rights extended to married hetero and same-sex couples.Janet Kira Lessin and I, when we focalize the annual Polyamory Conference at Harbin Hot Springs California July 29 -30, seek poly and poly-friendly members for our soon-to-be entirely self- sustaining rural poly-tantric community on the South Waiehu Stream of the West Maui Mountains, overlooking the island’s North Shore. Meet us at Harbin and/or call 808 244-4103 or email us at worldpolyamory@aol.com 

THE MOTHER OF POLY CONFERENCES: The Annual HARBIN POLYCON July 29 -31Join us and a whole three-day community of polys and poly-friendlies at Harbin Hot Springs California (2 hours north of S.F.) and learn how to vet potential partners, navigate the pitfalls of polyamory, propagate poly’s pleasure, found fantastic futuristic families and to choreograph conscious, compersive clan coupling to produce sacred synergy. And have mucho fun. There’s time for networking, enjoying nudity in our private conference area, great meals and of course, more loving as we love more. 

POLY PRESENTERS: SHARE WHAT’LL HELP PEOPLE PERFECT PARTICIPATION IN POLY PRACTICES Join Evalena Rose, Susan Campbell, the Lessins, Dave Doleshal and others: make PolyCon 11 the seminal event that teaches participants and those they tell the joys of relationship choice and more loving by loving more.  http://www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com  Call 808 244-4103 or write sashalessinphd@aol.com

Does monogamy lead to divorce? Monogamy is conditional love full of requirements and restraints, pulling in reigns, restricting freedom, spontaneity and choice. But monogamy’s opposite, running wild, sewing oats, following every whim, seems to avoid intimacy. Intimacy takes time, connection and intensive sharing to be truly known, loved and accepted and give your lovers enough feedback to know themselves. Unconditional love is a state of being, a feeling radiating from self towards another. If you set boundaries for self perservation and happiness, can you do so and still love unconditionally?

Polyamory, is the perfect middle path. Monogamy, polyamory, swinging, BDSM, fetish, gay, bi, lesbian, all paths have rules, regulations and ways of being, mindsets that lets souls open to love by recognizing human frailty, acknowledging it and loving despite it all Yet love and involvement differ. Healthy individuals set firm psychological emotional and physical boundaries which show that they love themselves first and foremost and won’t tolerate abuse and disrespect. Souls are naturally polyamorous.

After life we remember our oneness and reunite with our soul mates, our soul family. We’ve shared and loved in every imaginable way. We’ve been male and female, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, boss, employee, husband, wife, lover, enemy to each other over and over, lifetime after lifetime, throughout eternity. We’re not only polyamorous, we’re also incestuous. And through this flow, mixing and matching, loving and hating and feeling all emotions humanly possible, we learn how to love totally, completely, unconditionally.

Since we came through the veil, assumed human form and forgot who we truly are, love feels more conditional. But somewhere in the middle of this co-created dream, some of us wake up and remember who we really are–soul mates. We are soul mates with many souls with whom we interact, share many lives and are deeply, interconnected. We also have a primary soul mate who is our twin flame, our split-apart, created at the same moment in time and is our other half (think of the yin/yang symbol). All our beloved soul mates are equally important. All are one with GodSource and us and each other. Sometimes we meet and mate and sometimes we do not even incarnate together. Sometimes we incarnate at the same time and never meet. And sometimes we incarnate together and never do figure out how to get along.

All decisions to interact, our path in life and destiny are pre-determined by us with the help of our friends, guides, council and our soul family. Within that formula for our lives are variables to the theme. So nothing is set in stone. We are at choice in every moment. Egos, personalities are different than souls. Souls have eternal awareness of love and use physical incarnations as opportunities to learn lessons necessary for the evolution of our souls and for the progression of he entire human species and the evolution of consciousness for all beings in creation and in all the multi-verses. Sometimes for some of the lessons we do not incarnate with any of our soul mates or our twin flame. Now that’s a rough life.

But for the most part, we come together, some if not all of us, lifetime after lifetime. Spiritual evolution is why we chose to incarnate and experience life in the first place. Remembering who we are, waking up in the dream and progressing as a soul to the point where we can find our soul mates and learn how to love unconditionally is the way to bring heaven to earth. We are in actuality engaged in a form of eternal marriage in a group of souls with whom we mix and match in all possible combinations till we get it. Love IS. Form is inconsequential.

And yet, yes, in life we meet, mate, love, have sex, father, give birth, mother, experience it all, love, die, return after love, experience joy, hurt, pain and suffering and remember our oneness. In death there is clarity of our true nature and interactions with all souls. There we realize the depth and complexity of our dance. Here we can learn how to remember by following our hearts. Using polyamory coupled with maturity and learning how to navigate the waters and recognize eternal love, we can overcome the limitations of the ego, frailties of the human psyche and love our souls mates and include physical love if that so moves us.

I am eternally married to my soul mates. I have been blessed to meet and marry my twin flame, my primary soul mate and several of my soul mates. Individually and collectively Sasha and I have loved other soul mates and dear ones. We recognize that some of our individual soul mate connections apply to both of us. In other words, some of his soul mates are my soul mates and vice versa even though one of us may have felt a stronger connection to a soul mate than the other. All are Beloveds whether or not our egos were capable of working out the dynamics and overcoming cultural conditioning and religious and family-of-origin programming. Despite it all and because of it all, we love, totally, completely, unconditionally.

Yet part of me longs to reunite with all my soul mates. Ideally the challenge is to do it here, on Earth, in physical form. That would be an epiphany, so cool, so groovy if Sasha and I could actually meet and marry our soul mates. It would be bliss if we could recognize, while incarnated in the flesh, that which exists eternally. Heaven on Earth. Now that would be enlightenment. Maybe some future life. Perhaps soon with all the earth changes and economic collapse we’ll recognize what’s really important rather than going more and more unconscious and turning on one another like dogs fighting over a bone.

Wouldn’t it be nice to go through life with dignity and grace and support each other through thick and thin, for better or worse, each committed in life to take feedback and correction and commit to our eternal family, and all its members with whom we are eternally married? Wouldn’t it be lovely if we would commit, that here, now, in this incarnation that we’re going to get the lessons we came here to learn and do it right? In many ways we’re eternally married to all of us. But we operate under the rules of physicality which includes rules of time and limitations. So realistically, maybe all we can do is focus on our family, our circle of friends and beloveds. And maybe this time our soul family hasn’t chosen to all incarnate together. But then again, who knows?

Perhaps they have and this is all a test we’ve designed for ourselves to learn how to truly love. Ultimately it doesn’t matter one way or the other because eternally we’re one, we love all and everyone, in fact every thing. So like the 60s song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” Notice attractions. That’s your clue. Recognize those with whom you have strong bonds, karma, interactions, intensity, critical incidents, good or bad. That’s probably your soul family. Make amends. Do charitable and corrective actions. Send love.

If your loved ones are dead, talk to their spirits. They can hear you for they are now much wiser and have learned much. I highly recommend that if you’re involved with someone and feel love and attractions towards another or others, negotiate a new contract with your beloved. Learn how to expand your horizon to include all your beloveds because as souls you’re doing it. You can do it here too. But it will take a lot of work, sometimes intense, extreme work to overcome your programming, face your fears, negativity and projections. But if you do, you will grow exponentially. I know because that’s the path I’ve chosen. And while it may not have always been conscious, my soul, my ancient, wise soul guided my scared, wounded, Inner Child and human heart until now, I know the beauty of unconditional love. And I do love you all.

I will find my soul family, dead or alive, incarnate or in spirit, for I know we love one another eternally in an eternal marriage. For now, I write to you. I know we are forever connected and in the almost seven billion souls now incarnated, somehow some of us will find each other. I’m not sure if you’re male or female, young or old. But hopefully some of you are just the “right age” for sexual loving to be legal and that we choose to commit to follow our hearts. I pray we work out the dynamics of the ego to create a sacred marriage, a reflection of our eternal love of our hearts and souls, heaven made manifest on Earth.

Janet and her beloved Sasha run the World Polyamory Association with their partner, Dr. Dave Doleshal This year’s conference is July 29-31, 2001. www.worldpolyamoryassociation.com– Register early and save $$$$$

Janet Kira Lessin 1371 Malaihi Road, Maui, Hawaii 96793, janetlessin@gmail.com, janetlessin@aol.com

School of Tantra: www.schooloftantra.com, schooloftantra@aol.com

Temple of Tantra: www.templeoftantra.org, templeoftantra@gmail.com

Sacred Matrix: www.sacredmatrix.com, www.meetup.com/sacred-matrix, www.sacredmatrix.ning.com

808-244-4921 office, 808-214-3442 cell