Would you bring a third person into your relationship? 'Polyamory' - the practice where a couple encourages each other to form romantic attachments with other people.
Below, documentary-maker, Mary-Elaine Tynan writes for Culture about last weekend's RTÉ Documentary on One production - listen above to 'What If She's Prettier Than Me?'
I wouldn't consider myself to be conservative at all. Or naïve. But when, over the period of a couple of months, a number of friends revealed to me that they were in polyamorous relationships, I was really surprised. And intrigued.
Polyamory – from the words 'poly’ (the Greek word for many) and ‘amor’ (from the Latin word meaning love) - refers to the practice of having multiple romantic or sexual relationships at the same time. Initially I wondered if it was the same as an ‘open relationship’ but my friends told me that this which tends to be about having other sexual partners, possibly on a casual basis, whereas polyamory is about having connections with multiple people, which are usually not just necessarily sexual, but also romantic and emotional. As one polyamorous (‘poly’) couple explained, when they started exploring it, they quickly discovered that the people they like to have sex with are also the people they like to hang around with.
Like an open relationship, the key to polyamory is about openness and honesty. People who are polygamous stress that their relationships are very different to having affairs, which are all too common and accepted - or at the very least tolerated - in our society. Poly people say that what they do is the opposite of cheating because they aren’t sneaking around, lying to their partners, having two mobile phones and engaging in all the other subterfuge and dishonest practices associated with cheating.
Until these conversations with my friends, I didn’t realise that I knew any polyamorous people. And when I did, I had so many questions. I could have spoken to some of the more public figures who have been open about their polyamorous relationships, and particularly in the past year or two, but that didn’t interest me as much. I wanted to know how common is polyamory in the general Irish population - people like my friends? I wanted to talk to regular poly people; people we work with; do sports with; people we see at the school gates? I wanted ask them all about it.
In my search for regular Irish poly people, I started to ask around and almost immediately, one person told me they knew an openly poly couple who might be willing to talk to me. Which they were. And we had such fascinating conversations, many of which are featured in this documentary. They told me about Facebook page called Polyamory Ireland, which I checked out and discovered has close to 1700 members. That allowed me to connect with people in the Irish ‘poly’ community.
After reaching out to poly people via the Polyamory Ireland FB page, I managed to speak to a number of poly people who were willing to talk to me either on or off-the-record. I spoke to married couples, single polyamorists, those in thruples, and people who were curious and thinking of becoming polygamous but slightly wary. I realised quickly that polyamory isn’t limited to one particular group as the people I met identified as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, non-binary, cis-gender and a host of others. I also spoke to people who are monogamous and as I find out their thoughts on it, what they knew about it, what they didn’t know and wanted to find out.
From my conversations with monogamous people, and based on my own thoughts, I realised there are a few questions that most people seem to have about polyamory so I set about getting some answers. I asked them things like how did they start their polyamorous journey and what attracted them to it? I asked how it works in their lives; the practicalities; the rules and the risks. That led us into talking about that one ugly emotion that rears its head in so many relationships and which everyone mentions when the subject of polyamory comes up – jealousy – and how they manage it. I also asked them who they’ve told about being poly – friends; family members; colleagues - and how those people reacted to it. And I had to ask them about the one issue that concerns a lot of monogamous people about polyamory –children – are they told and how does it affect them.
RTÉ Documentary on One: What if She’s Prettier than Me is about the lives of Irish polyamorous people: not so much about the sex they’re having – though that comes up too - but the emotional connections; the practicalities of it all; the rules; the funny moments; the risks. It’s about hearing the voices of people we don’t often hear. And about getting some answers to questions that monogamous people have about polyamory.
Produced by Mary-Elaine Tynan and Ronan Kelly
