Thanks Salon and the author for writing an article that pretty much describes a lot of the folks I know in the poly community. Pretty much just plain folks arranging their families in the way that makes the most sense for them.

My hope is that sometime in my lifetime, multiple partnered families will be considered one in a broad range of happy possibilities, free of an unfortunate amount of weirdness and misunderstanding from people who think they have a stake in how other people live and love.

Nice work Salon!

I'm sorry, but this article just made me think "polys" are downright weird. I started out thinking they might just be normal people like me who happen to like being intimate with a lot of people, but once you make it into some kind of Movement with its own Dogma and suggestions to form limited liability corporations (HUH???), you've lost me.

It's a harsh prescription, but if long-term monogamy is not your sexual fantasy, you've got no business getting married!

If, in other words, what gets you going is "the chase" or "the falling in love" or, and let's be frank, "the closure", and not the whole emotional journey of any relationship, then going beyond that is going to be fraught with difficulty for you and anyone involved with you.

Watching several poly friends have a series of three/four person relationships that all ended very explosively, I must say I doubted the lifestyle could ever "work" --- until I realized that the explosive rush at the end was basically what they were all in it for... different strokes for different folks, right?

The usual caveats about letting any part of your fantasy life run things apply here, as they always do.

If it works for you, and you're not hurting others, go for it.

Personally I feel its hard enough to find TWO people capable of handling a mature emotional and physical relationship, much less three or more. Sounds like a lot of talking and a whole lot of furniture re-arranging.

That being said, ANY group of consenting adults should be allowed to declare themselves a valid family. I find the idea of the government which ostensibly exists to serve us, defining what constitutes a family to be the most egregious act of our govt. overstepping the boundaries of its authority (currently).

Things have certainly become Stranger in a Strange Land.

Like any moderately happy married monogamist guy ... I wonder about other partners, polyamory, etc.

But then I think about my kids, and the effects of constantly shifting romantic attachments on their lives.

Much as I might like to add a sexual partner or two to my married life, I just can't see how it could be in my children's interest to follow that fantasy.

Someone will get pissed off eventually. Someone will move out. Some child will be sleeping at two houses. Some child will not have Mommy and Daddy waking up in the same house, and being there for him/her every day. You just know it.

So I'm going upstairs to my wife now, to sleep with the woman I've slept with for 15 years and produced 2 children with. I give a little sigh for other possibilities, but I don't think I'll follow them. It's all "for the children", the most important reality in my life, the most important thing I've ever done with my life, the only reality that will matter in the end.

My feeling about marriage is "it's really not about you (or me)" Not once kids are involved. (Exceptions for really miserable relationships of course...)

So far that seems to outweigh any other fantasies or desires for complex tribal arrangements and middled aged sexual or romantic variety.

My desire and excitement for my spouse waxes and wanes (but it does wax sometimes!) but none of that matters too much because my commitment to my children is absolute, and I don't think I or most people are very likely to be able to live out a life of total commitment to a litter of children in a polyamorist community.

(Someone will have a counter example of course... but I'm speculating about most average folks... including me.)

Many years ago I had a crazy girlfriend.(How many stories start out like that?)

She had a male friend with whom she often engaged in ostensibly asexual physical playfulness, to which I objected. She said, "oh, relax! Gribby is perfectly safe! We've always played like this."

I told her that Gribby was sexually frustrated and wanted to be amorous with her, but was uncomfortable with his sexuality.So he felt complelled to ladle his overtures with an overlay of unfocused, sheepdog "playfulness," and if she knew he would always be "safe" with her, she wasn't doing him any favors with respect to his figuring himself out by playing along. (they were both in their mid-twenties at the time.)

She told me that "she didn't see him as a threat" to me, or our relationship, and told me I was being domineering and old-fashioned by objecting to their friendship.

For a while I put up with this, with substantial reluctance. Then one day I saw them nose-to-nose, with their fingers intertined,not kissing, just looking at other dreamily.(he was also my room-mate, and I met her through him.)

I had enough and ended the relationship. I told her I was unwilling to be manipulated by her phoney-baloney feminist rhetoric and unwilling to put up with her faux-sexuality with her male friend. Undoubtedly she was right that I couldn't change other people, I conceded, but I was damned if I was going to go along with her b.s.

There's a little more to the story, which isn't really worth going into for the sake of this discussion. The point I want to make with respect to polyamory is I wonder how many people are in polyamorous relationship because one partner in a hitherto conventional "duo" relationship announces his "bold new honesty" and says he wants to continue dating or being married to Gribette, but also wants to date Gribeena, and believes in openness and honesty, and expects Gribette to understand.

Bungo sez: "After all, baby, I'm being open and honest, and not forbiding you a similar openness and honesty. C'mon."

Gribette:you just want to have an affair and instead of feeling guilty, you wanna project your guilt and make me responsible for "accepting your honesty. Do you want a medal or something? Screw that."

Bungo: why Gribette, I'm shocked at you...

Maybe if I look through Shaw's plays I'll find he wrote about this a hundred or so years ago.