The New Infidelity: What makes polyamory and open relationships work?

According to counselling psychologist Dr Mou Sultana, those who orient towards polyamory, the practice of having multiple partners at one given time, aren’t always focused on the physical aspects of having more than one partner.

“Both terms [open relationship and polyamory] refer to the GSRD population, which is the gender, sexuality and relationship, diverse people,” says the Limerick-based counsellor.

“Open relationships may be one or both partners seeking sexual relationships independently from one another; an open relationship could also involve swinging, which is just seeking sexual activities in certain settings such as parties or social settings,” she explains, “whereas with polyamory, there’s another element to it. There’s emotional elements to it so it’s not just sexual. It’s both a sexual and emotional relationship with multiple partners concurrently. Rather than just strictly being sexual, there’s an aspect of love and emotion involved.”

The counselling psychologist who is the author of The Castration Complex: What is So Natural About Sexuality? also says that respect and emotional intelligence are key to sustaining a healthy poly arrangement.

“From working with polyamorous and the relationship diversity population, and reading on this, one thing that I have definitely come to is that those who respect others boundaries are the ones who will succeed in polyamory,” she says.

“If you don’t respect someone else’s no or someone else’s yes, if you’re not good in communication, in terms of actually speaking these things out and understanding where you draw the boundaries, what the expectations are going to be, I don’t think it’s going to be a success, and there will be heartaches,” she explains, “so emotional intelligence, in terms of respect, and in terms of communication, are the major keys.” 

Wexford woman Virginia Merriman (33) met her husband in college ten years ago. She has a partner who she’s been with for two years, and is dating a married couple that both she and her husband are seeing. The 33-year-old attributes the success of her polyamorous relationships to being self-aware.

“I think somebody who is quite self-aware would be suited to polyamory, someone willing to continue working on themselves,” she says, “because I think being able to examine where your emotions are coming from, what your feelings are rooted in, and being able to address that is a big part of it.” The mother-of-two admits that while she and her husband initially had a monogamous relationship, they had no qualms about meeting people on nights out.

“Very early on in our relationship, we weren’t what you would consider typically monogamous in that we were both bisexual and kind of OK with kissing people on nights out. So it just kind of gradually evolved from there and matured into an open relationship.”

The homemaker who describes an open relationship as one where people can share their bodies, and a poly relationship as one where people can share their hearts, says that the relationship between her and her husband evolved into polyamory when they both developed feelings for the same woman.

“There was someone that we were both dating, and I had a chat with my husband one night and I said ‘I am heading towards having feelings for this person, and I can put the brakes on that if I need to. But I need to see where you’re at,’ and he said that he was starting to have feelings for them as well, so we evolved into polyamory from there. Merriman and her husband had a young family at the time, and juggling parenthood with a relationship that was in the infancy of a triad meant date nights between the three involved staying in or casual walks.

“Our son was young at the time, so in terms of dating, that somewhat limits things in terms of babysitting. A lot of the time she [the secondary partner] would come over, we would do movie night at our house, and sometimes we went out for walks on the beach together. They would come over at least once a week and hang out for six plus hours,” says Merriman.

“I only had one kid at the time, he spent time with her and got friendly with her,” she explains. “Now, both my kids are aware that mammy and daddy have friends, and that sometimes we go and stay at friends’ houses or sometimes friends come and stay at our house, they don’t think that it’s abnormal or very different to what most of their friends’ lives look like.” 40-year-old Connacht woman Louise Lawlor* is also a mother-of-two trying to balance family life and a poly relationship. She has been dating someone for the last six months while being in a 12-year marriage, and her husband is also seeing someone.

“I only have one other partner because I’ve reached a point nearly five years in where I realised that that’s all I have capacity for,” she explains, “I have two primary school going kids, I volunteer, I’m a busy person, so I couldn’t handle more than one other relationship.” So what would prompt a busy mother and wife to explore a poly relationship?

“We were together 10 years and a conversation about what do you miss from being single came up,” she explains, “like you miss the spark of meeting new people, you miss those butterflies that you get, that feeling when you’re about to kiss someone for the same time.”

While Lawlor admits the couple wasn’t in a great place at the time of the conversation, when they eventually did revisit the idea and embark on a poly lifestyle, they lost some friends.

“The first set of friends I ever told was very early on when I started trying out polyamory and I didn’t fully know what I was, or what I wanted, or what we were doing, and the friend reacted with shock, and then they shut down and didn’t want to talk about it,” she says.

“I was going through this huge transitional period in my life, in my marriage, while parenting small children who did not sleep, and I didn’t have my friends to talk to about it.” On the contrary, when 31-year-old Sarah Keenan* told her friends about the status of her poly marriage, and the fact that she is the only one in her relationship who currently has partners outside of the marriage, she was met with curiosity.

“Usually when I tell people, they’re like ‘what about your spouse?’ and I tell them that he’s not in another relationship at the moment because he didn’t feel like he was ready. I know that some people are usually like ‘that seems kind of unfair,’ but I think it would be unfair for me to push him into a relationship just because I’m in one,” says the Leinster woman.

To an external eye, Keenan’s behaviour would constitute cheating. However, she says she is forthright about the consensual behaviour that takes place outside the marriage.

“In our relationship, we have rules of what we deem as acceptable behaviour, just like you would in a monogamous relationship. So for us, if we’re talking to someone, we keep each other in the loop, so we’re not blindsided,” she says.

The 31-year-old who says “people can express love to multiple people,” also says that her capacity for love was apparent from a young age.

“Ever since I was a kid, I always had a feeling that I would have more. I used to have wives, I used to have husbands, both plural,” she shares, “but as you grow up, you’re taught that you can’t do that because that’s not the thing we do in this society, so you think it has to be just the one person. That never stopped the feeling of ‘I could definitely love a lot of people’ though. I know I have the capacity to love more than one person, and it doesn’t diminish how I love each of those people.”

(*Not the subject’s real name.)