Polyamorous love. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? How could you possibly know until you’ve given it a try?
Writer Jeff Leavell and his husband Alex have been together for almost five years. A year and a half ago, they opened their relationship up to include a third man, Jon, and the three became a triad.
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“Before I found myself in one, I resisted the idea of a polyamorous relationship,” Leavell admits in a new piece published by Vice. “I made fun of my friends who were in ‘triads.’ I thought the whole concept was ridiculous. But when we met Jon, my perspective shifted.”
Of course, polyamorous relationships have been around forever. But it wasn’t until recently that people have started speaking openly about them. More and more folks are giving polyamory a try.
A recent online survey, which surveyed approximately 5,000 people between 2012 and 2015, found that nearly 15 percent of respondents either were currently in or had previously been in a polyamorous relationship, and 25 percent were open to the idea. And dating websites like gaypolyamorous.com and polymatchmaker.com have begun springing up all over the Internet.
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Leavell continues: “Falling in love with Jon—and watching Alex fall in love with Jon—taught me that there is more love out there in this world than I had ever imagined.”
But it wasn’t without complications.
“We struggled in the process,” he says. “Three-way fucking is hot; three-way fighting is a nightmare.”
Other challenges, Leavell writes, included the obvious: Jealousy.
I’ve found that if I ever feel jealousy, the root of that emotion almost always comes from not feeling good enough for Jon or Alex. Jealousy always equals insecurity for me.
And jealousy is normal—it happens all the time, no matter what kind of relationship you’re in. It’s part of being human. But at the end of the day, it’s how we react to that jealousy that matters. I constantly have to remind myself to shift the focus of my thoughts back to me:What am I really afraid of? Why do I not believe I am deserving of all this love?
Then, of course, there is the stigma and stereotypes that many people associate with polyamorous love. This, Leavell says, was only intensified by the fact that the three men are gay.
Someone told me I was proving every right-wing religious conservative’s wildest fears about gay people true—that we were all amoral sluts, incapable of monogamy or serious relationships, who couldn’t take marriage seriously. And this dude was gay. My response was: So what? Why can’t I live my life on my own terms? Isn’t that what we’re fighting so hard for—the right to live how we choose? To not have my love and sex dictated by some arbitrary social structure? Why should anybody tell me how and who to love?
Ultimately, however, Leavell says he’s happier as a triad than he was as a couple. Polyamorous love, he writes, can “open doors inside you that you never knew existed—and it may even bring an opportunity to grow.”
What do you think? Would you be in a polyamorous relationship? Why or why not? Sound off in the comments section below.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Fine. But your marriage is a sham. But that’s fine. But it’s a sham.
etseq
This guy would be the last person I took advice from – a long term heroin addict who keeps relapsing in “recovery” (including on his honeymoon) who can’t face aging so he thinks adding some boytoy into the mix is some magical solution. All of his articles are just extended humblebrags about his sex life and they read like bad penthouse forum fiction. Vice used to have relatively decent coverage of gay issues but it has reduced it all to clickbait sex, just like it does for straights…
Jack Meoff
It’s all fun and games until two of them decide they want to be together without the third which invariably happens and it sucks ass even more if the one being ousted from the relationship is the one who introduced the third person in the first place. I’ve seen that happen.
Dorian Prince
I respect that people want to do that and I feel no need to judge. That said, I have never tried it or been asked to try it but it does not resonate with me as an option for a committed romantic relationship. I’m fine with 3-way sex for fun but I don’t see how I can feel comfortable in a 3-way committed and intimate partnership. What was presented does not convince me.
Bauhaus
@Dorian Prince:
Yep. Extracurricular threesomes can be nice and may work in dating type relationships, but I’m skeptical about it working in a marriage. To each his own, though.
Brian-E
Polyamoury is part of humanity and, as the article author states, it always has been. Long term relationships with multiple partners occur more often than is readily apparent because the partners in these relationships so often have to hide the true relationship status from the outside world. Isn’t that a familiar tale for all of us?
Having fought long and hard, like so many of us here, to have my own relationship with my same-sex partner recognised and accepted, I’m not about to tell anyone in a polyamorous relationship that their home life is any less valid than mine.