Television has captured our attention with shows about polygamy and polyamory. People either condone or criticize these unusual lifestyles, but I have been mesmerized by the relationships that these communities foster. Indeed, the poly world embraces love and personal growth that makes the monogamous paradigm look like a throwback to an earlier century.
What is the Poly Lifestyle?
First, for those who have not watched Polyamory: Married and Dating on ShowTime and Sister Wives on TLC, there is a vast difference in lifestyle between polyamory and polygamy. Polyamory is equated with multiple people in a committed, sexual relationship. The show Polyamory: Married and Dating focuses largely on one triad and one pod, where three and four people respectively live in a committed relationship. While committed, they are essentially in open relationships, where each individual can foster additional romantic alliances.
Sister Wives is aligned with traditional marriage. Yet, in these relationships, one man is married to several women. The women are not sexual with one another and they are faithful to the husband they share. He can court women, but he is not permitted to have sex outside of the committed partnerships.
While the “poly” lifestyle varies significantly by group and belief system, there are commonalities.
A Healthy Way of Embracing Feelings
For both types of families, feelings are important. Members of these communities see dealing with jealousy as key to personal growth and expansion. In a monogamous relationship, jealousy can be endearing, but what is cool about polyamorous relationships is that jealousy can transform into the ideal of “compersion,” a word that denotes the good feelings that arise when a “significant other” is in love with another person. Imagine if a monogamous individual could feel good about an affair his or her spouse just had, rather than the situation prompting rage and separation. Of course, secret affairs are not cool for the polyamorous either because the relationships focus on trust and honesty.
Affairs sometimes happen in monogamous relationships not because one party is a despicable cheater, but because life is complicated. Having the wiggle room to grow as life unfolds would provide couples with greater opportunities for expansion, but traditional marital unions are closed relationships.
That said, it is important to recognize that poly relationships have limits too. Poly families do not necessarily tolerate every new relationship that comes into their experience, but they talk about their jealousies and whether the new relationship is good for the group. Sometimes, the partners break the rules. Like all relationships, there may be infidelities and there are certainly differences of opinion on how these complexities are handled. The difference between polyamory and monogamy is that the former aspires to a higher level of honesty and commitment. It also has fewer hard and fast rules.
Similarly, in the polygamous world, the sisters acknowledge that sometimes they experience jealousy, particularly when a new wife comes on board, but they work on it, and they are honest about their feelings.
Love and Jealousy
So in the monogamous world, there is a focus on fidelity, and jealousy is almost expected. If someone is not jealous, it is assumed that his or her romantic feelings have fizzled. But think about it. Why is a negative emotion so highly valued?
I think we have to recognize that jealousy is natural and normal, but it is something to be overcome. Rather than seeing the jealousy as something that requisites more control over our partners, realize that this is an opportunity for personal growth.
We are all transient beings and we essentially live and die separately and alone. We ought to work on ourselves and live with others, respecting their desires and their goals. Even when we are in committed relationships, we have to see ourselves as individuals first.
Finally, ideally, we should be honest about our feelings. Our feelings just exist. We have no control over them so we should not judge them nor should we judge the feelings of our partners.
Watch and Learn
Bursting the bubble of the one-on-one romantic promise of exclusive love is disappointing, but we can grow into a broader concept of love that is of course ultimately tied to the larger, spiritual experience. Love is eternal. But the romantic Romeo and Juliet ideal may just be nothing more than a childish and possessive, limiting kind of love. Love is ultimately deeper and more powerful than that.
While we may not want to give up monogamy for any type of poly relationship, we can certainly learn a thing or two by watching these unique Reality TV families build honest and loving relationships.
