(You don't have to live in Somerville to get one of those, though its
validity is unlikely to be recognized elsewhere. Instead, people frame it on their wall.)
I spent a week in Somerville, a tight-knit small world made even smaller
by the fact that so many people in “the community” are dating each
other, or have done. Meet the polys.
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Jay, an IT consultant and self-confessed computer nerd, grew up in
suburban New Jersey and became interested in polyamory at the age of ten
after reading Robert A. Heinlein sci-fi books featuring sexually
promiscuous open marriages. His first teenage relationship was
nonmonogamous. “I was poly before poly was a term,” he says, blue hair
tied back, maroon nail varnish on his toes.
...He moved to Somerville in the mid-1990s to find many people he knew
coalescing around Boston’s university hub — either tech nerds he’d met
in online chatrooms or those who attended the sci-fi conventions he
would frequent. Large numbers of them were interested in polyamory.
“We had all independently been working on this thing [polyamory], and we
found each other and we had a lot to talk about,” he says. He started
attending casual poly meet-ups in people’s homes, applying the same
academic rigour to discussions about romance as they did to technology.
“How do you handle jealousy? How do you handle getting a new partner
when you’ve had one for a while?”
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...Jealousy can be a problem, Ash admits, recalling the arguments when
one of Jay’s girlfriends moved in during Covid soon after they first
occupied the property: “I was mad as I thought he and I were gonna get a
nesting period. And then there was this other person around who was very
exciting and sparkly and taking a lot of his time.”
Tensions mounted over sleeping arrangements: Jay’s partners had their
own bedrooms and he was switching between the two, without a room of his
own. “There were points when each of them was, like, ‘Go away, I want to
have the bed to myself,’ ” he says. “And points where each of them was,
like, ‘I want you and I’m not getting enough cuddle time with you.’ So
there were continuous adjustments. We say often in poly that love is
infinite but time is not.”
Many of the people I speak to share complicated Google calendars with
their various partners to co-ordinate schedules.
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...“There’s a popular view that polyamory should only be
nonhierarchical, seen as the purest, most progressive and equitable,
almost social justice-oriented,” says Jennifer Schneider, a
Massachusetts-based relationship therapist.
Others find this oddly prescriptive. Kathy Labriola, 70, was at the
centre of the gay rights movement at Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s,
and is in two concurrent romantic relationships, each 50 years long.
“There is no utopian way or morally or ethically ‘right’ way to be
polyamorous,” she says. “It’s strange and ironic to me that some of
these folks who are so into this nonhierarchical model are so
puritanical and judgmental about it. It makes the individual king.”
--------------------------
...Willie Burnley Jr, 31, a socialist [city] councillor and polyamorous
mayoral candidate for Somerville [update Nov. 5: he lost to the more establishment liberal Jake Wilson], rejects any hierarchy in any
relationship and describes himself as a “relationship anarchist”. We
meet at the Diesel Cafe, a famous meeting point for poly folk in the
area.
Burnley was “ardently and passionately monogamous” until 2015,
when he had a shattering heartbreak. “I felt so bad that the
relationship failed,” he says. “I realised the monogamous view of
romance was very self-destructive. I realised my most important
relationship is with myself. And frankly I’m a bit indulgent — I don’t
like the idea of denying myself something that I want and could
potentially have, just because society says no.”
Surely there are some hierarchies in his relationships — is he closer to
some friends than others? “Oh, certainly,” he replies. “But saying that
you’re closer with someone isn’t saying that you will always be closer
to someone.” Isn’t this just an exercise in semantics? “No, it’s an
exercise in building life in the way that you want to build your life.”
We walk out of the café and on to the street. “They’re another person in
the community,” he says, waving to someone loading their shopping into
the car. Does polyamory get complicated in a small place? “Oh,
certainly.”
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...In another suburban home about ten minutes’ walk from the high street
is another polycule. Ryan Malone, 39, a biochemist, lives here with his
girlfriend, Emily, 31, a veterinary nurse. “Four cats is too many,” says
Malone, 39, as their pets go scampering down corridors covered in fake
vines, psychedelic art and fairy lights.
Emily has a girlfriend, Anna, living nearby, whom she met while Anna was
dating Malone, a bouncing labrador of a man with a jaunty quiff and
bright blue patchwork denim trousers. Among Malone’s many lovers is a
“comet” partner in Toronto — so called because they only see each other
about four times a year — another lover, Marissa, and a married woman in
Vermont who has children aged 11 and 9. “I’m like an uncle to the kids,”
Malone says. “She’s very open about it, they know that their mom’s poly.
The oldest son and I read the same books and play chess together.”
In an apartment upstairs live Nick and his “nesting partner”, Kit;
they’re both 39 and trying for a baby. Kit is an occasional
romantic/sexual partner of Malone and also has a number of other lovers.
...“There are probably over 80 of us in our polycule,” Malone says. One
member — “a data nerd at Harvard” — tried to build a 3D map of all their
romantic connections but it got so convoluted that it stopped being able
to show information meaningfully. “It was just showing how complicated
everything was,” Malone adds.
How does he manage having so many partners? “I have a comfort with
complexity,” he says, grinning widely.
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...Their polycule was “formed after a failed orgy”, Kit says. “A bunch
of us rented a cabin, one person didn’t get the memo and invited some
co-workers. We had to wait each night until they went to bed before the
shenanigans could happen. It was very awkward. But we were, like, OK, we
have to be more intentional about this.”
...Though their polycule doesn’t have formal membership, people have to
be vetted and sometimes interviewed before attending a party or meet-up.
“We try to find out if this person has any history of problematic
behaviour in terms of consent violations,” says Kit, one of the main
organisers. “For example, we found out one person would constantly drag
people in to dance [on a dancefloor] and not take no for an answer. And
we’re, like, that’s kind of a red flag. It shows that you just don’t
really respect someone’s bodily autonomy.”
Another person who organises social events in Somerville, who wanted to
remain anonymous, tells me it can be a “slow and selective process” to
make friends here.
“You almost need ten references for whether you’re going to be invited
to a group hangout,” they tell me. “There is also this social ostracism,
this call-out culture, which I’m not sure is as productive as people
often hope it is. Every so often there will be a Facebook post that
circulates that’s, like, ‘Just so everyone knows, this person did this
thing on this date and I no longer feel safe around them and you
shouldn’t either.’ It feels like we’re boycotting people the same way we
boycott companies.”
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...“Seeing others has been really inspirational — you can do something
weird and out there and have a loving family,” Nick says. In fact the
sense of community the polycule provides was one of the reasons he
decided to have children in the first place. It takes a village to raise
a child, after all. “What stressed me out about monogamous relationships
is that you had to be co-parents, lovers, owners of a home, friends all
in alignment. And if one stops working, then that’s a problem that could
crater the whole relationship. Being able to not need all of those
things, all the time, from one person feels very freeing.”
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...[James] has since learnt there are two types of people who
enter polyamory:
those who feel it has always been innate and generally find it easy, and
those who have to unlearn everything they thought they knew and battle
through extreme discomfort, after which, he insists, comes a sort of nirvana. James was in the
latter group, reading books and listening to podcasts and talking and
talking, trying to reason his way through the jealousy and fear.
“I felt like I was on fire all the time, in both a good way and a bad
way,” he says. “I went through a long process of figuring out why these
things were so upsetting and then changing myself so they were not
upsetting any more.” ...
