In times of polarization and cultural battles, one of the few meeting points between conservatives and progressives is monogamy. The system is built on heterosexual couples who swear eternal love and reproduce, but that could be changing. Are there other ways to relate? Can you have healthy relationships with more than one person at a time? Why if another person appears in our life are we condemned to infidelity or a breakup?
Roger (35 years old, self-employed) and Iris (31 years old, shop assistant) had been in a monogamous and closed relationship for 15 years when Emely (25 years old) burst into their lives. That was four years ago, and now the three of them live happily together in an apartment in Sants. They met at the workplace: the Boquería in Barcelona. “We crossed paths when we left work and we started hanging out, and we shared more and more time and hobbies,” says Iris.
Something similar happened to Nando, Víctor and Leo, a couple of three since 2010. Nando and Víctor (both 51 years old) met Leo through a digital dating application when they were looking for a sporadic meeting to keep the flame of love alive. a relationship of almost twenty years. What was going to be something specific ended in romance. “In January 2011, we gave Leo the keys to the apartment where we lived, in Gracia,” says Nando, who explains that from the first moment there was a strong connection between the three of them. “It was as if we had known each other all our lives, we quickly started doing ‘couple things’,” he adds.
Spain has gone from monogamy as the only acceptable model to a varied map of relationships that center on the pact. In fact, 47.6% of Spaniards believe that they can have several emotional-sexual relationships at the same time, according to the latest CIS survey that asked about fidelity and open relationships. An almost equal percentage (49.7%) disagrees. Regarding sexual encounters agreed upon within a stable couple, they are accepted by 41.4% of Spaniards.
“Monogamy is not a practice: it is a system, a way of thinking,” writes philosopher Brigitte Vasallo in the book Monogamous Thinking. Polyamorous terror (Traficantes, 2018). “It is a superstructure that determines what we call our ‘private life’, our sexual-affective practices, our love relationships. The monogamous system dictates how, when, who and in what way to love and desire, and also what circumstances are a reason for sadness, which for anger, what hurts us and what doesn’t. Where is it written that love is a matter of two?
“Love is sharing time and experiences, it is coexistence, it is being family,” says Roger. “We are family, friends and a couple,” adds Emily. “Normally people separate their friends from their partner, but we do everything together, although we also maintain our individual space,” Iris concludes.
The heterosexual couple is in crisis. The writer and academic Asa Seresin coined the term heteropessimism in 2019 to define the attitude of disappointment, shame and despair of the state of heterosexual monogamous relationships. It is increasingly difficult to believe in the ‘better half’: a single person who fully and satisfactorily covers your sexuality, your affections and feelings and also satisfies you on an intellectual and cultural level, with whom to spend your free time and holidays. “Polyamorous terror is the fear, also real, of not having anyone to organize life with you and around you. All these terrors are real: in a world created by and for the couple, any other life option is a constant vertigo,” says Vasallo.
“Dear mom, I am going to have my own child with my husband and wife.” The writer Gabriela Wiener wrote a letter to her mother in 2018, published in La Revista de la Universidad de México, to inform her what her family model was: one made up of a couple of three between a man and two women and the children he had. had with each of them. “Yes, of course, as you suspect, multiple loves can also be ephemeral, disposable loves. That individualism, that consumerism, that extreme liberalism in the affections, that consuming one body and then going after another, exists in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. Polyamory is not the social communist paradise you and dad dreamed of, I’m afraid. Therefore, it is not our ‘sentimental situation’ or ‘marital status’ that makes us particular but what we do with that type of chosen bond.”
Roger, Iris and Emily also want to form a similar family structure in the future, “when economic conditions allow,” they point out. Children do not enter into the plans of Nando, Víctor and Leo. “Between the three of us we have 14 nephews and we are now great uncles, we are the trititos,” says Víctor. What they would like is to be able to formalize their three-way relationship. Nando and Víctor married in 2006, shortly after gay marriage was approved in Spain. In 2012, they held a symbolic ceremony for the three of them. Today, polyamorous relationships are not recognized in our country nor are they protected by our legislation.
Is any other life option a constant vertigo? “Absolutely. For us it has all been very natural. A month after we met, we had a dinner to introduce Leo to all our friends,” explains Nando. “We have never had the need to hide it from our families, who have seen it as something normal from day one,” adds Víctor. “When I told my mother, she saw me so happy that she brought out the champagne,” Leo says. “They haven’t asked us a single question. “Our parents were more open-minded than many young people today.”
A legal protection would improve some issues. “Right now, if something happens to Nando or Víctor, they would have a widow’s pension, something that leaves me out, for example. Or if one of their parents die, I don’t even have the right to a day off from work,” says Leo. “We would like the approval of the marriage of three in Spain, as is already happening in other countries. And also the option of going to a hotel and being able to request a triple bed. The world is designed for couples,” he adds.
A legal protection would improve some issues. “Right now, if something happens to Nando or Víctor, they would have a widow’s pension, something that leaves me out, for example. Or if one of their parents die, I don’t even have the right to a day off from work,” says Leo. “We would like the approval of the marriage of three in Spain, as is already happening in other countries. And also the option of going to a hotel and being able to request a triple bed. The world is designed for couples,” he adds.
The media discourse proposes non-monogamous relationships as something easy and superficial, for promiscuous people, allergic to commitment and with little desire to commit. But is there room for jealousy? How are time and care managed to responsibly care for more than one person? Jealousy appears in the same way as it does in a normative heterosexual couple and there is usually a period of adaptation when a third person appears. “At first I was jealous because I saw that there wasn’t the same complicity with me that they had with each other,” Emily confesses. “But after a few months it went away.”
Loving more people does not necessarily mean loving them better, but rather the opposite: there are more people susceptible to being harmed and that is why emotional responsibility must be greater. Good communication and emotional management by all members of the relationship is key to success. “What worked was that: we neither raised it, nor looked for it, it simply emerged and hence the success, we have never hidden,” summarizes Iris. A polyamorous relationship does not have to be better or worse. It simply is.
Consensual or ethical non-monogamy encompasses several relationship models, including polyamory, open relationships, and swinging. What are we talking about in each case?
