PolyOz

Seems as though polyamory is starting to "come out" worldwide as can be seen by this article from the Jakarta Post

Aside from the huge gasp that reverberates throughout the country, the response toward the sex tape involving television personality Cut Tari and rock star Nazriel “Ariel” Ilham, has been somewhat varied.

Keepers of traditional values were disappointed with what they viewed as “irresponsible” behavior from a wife. Many others criticized her husband for being too soft on her, in spite of an extra-marital affair with another man. But for a large number of trend watchers in Jakarta, the sex tape is more proof that what they term as an “open marriage” is alive and well in the city.

Open marriage, loosely defined as a marriage in which partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without being regarded as infidelity, is barely a novelty in what is a seemingly conservative society like ours, although it gained less notoriety than the case of polygamy, which has been accepted in the country for decades.

Origianlly published - The Times April 8, 2005

© Jane Shilling / The Times

Some of you may be thinking that this is just a fancy new word for what our grandparents used daringly to call “free love” — a form of behaviour which, in one guise or another, has surely been going on as long as human reproduction itself. But there is evidently more to it than that, for a couple of polyamorous psychologists, Dr Meg Barker of London South Bank University and Ani Ritchie of the Southampton Institute, have gone to all the trouble of presenting a paper on the phenomenon to the British Psychological Society.

Miss Ritchie and Dr Barker are themselves polyamorous, as it happens, with each other, and lots of other people as well. This is how it works: Dr Barker has “two main partners — Ani and Erich — and two other fairly regular partners. I live with two, spending about half my time with each, and see the other two maybe once a week. Two are male, two are female.” Oh, do try and keep up at the back.

Initially, the polyamorists were anxious about polyphobia from friends and family — “coming out is hard”. But, as Dr Barker cheerily remarked: “After an initial ‘Eek!’ most of them have settled down to the idea.” As for the children of these polyandrous ménages, well, they’re fine too: “Some of us have children and they’re as good as any parent.” Though how she can be sure, until those children grow up into happy, well balanced adults — or not, as the case may be — she does not say.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the objections to polyamory of traditional Christian morality, to which British society still vaguely adheres as an ideal, it is still not hard to think of reasons not to become polyamorous. All the skittering about from household to household, for a start. Half a week with one lover, half with the other, plus a couple of nights with each other’s others. You’d have to keep a full set of kit in every household: four toothbrushes, four hairbrushes, four lots of face cream, and tights and underwear . . . Imagine the expense!