Polyamory isn’t all about sexNEWS | 20 February 2026The first time her husband went on a date with another woman, Kelly felt sick to her stomach. Consumed by jealousy, she threw up twice and cried for three hours straight until he came home. The second time he had a date night, with a different woman, Kelly sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket, hate-watching 90 Day Fiancé until she heard his car in the driveway. By the fifth time, she just went to bed early. The eighth time, Kelly met her husband for drinks after his date. Then, she says, they went home and had the best sex of their lives.
Kelly, a trial attorney, is no shrinking violet. She goes on her own dates with other men, and her husband, Tim, is thrilled. (Names have been changed in this story to protect the privacy of the people I interviewed.) “There’s nothing like that feeling when Kelly comes home from a date, and she’s soaring and giddy because it went so well,” he says. “And I’m like, ‘That’s amazing, babe! I’m so happy for you!’ And I truly am.”
Kelly and Tim practice polyamory: they form deep, meaningful, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. This departure from traditional dating and marriage is gaining popularity in the U.S., according to research and surveys. In popular media, though, it is usually ridiculed and dismissed.
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Critics deride polyamorists as decadent liberal hedonists looking for ethical cover for their desire to sleep with lots of people. An Atlantic article says polyamory is emblematic of the “banal pleasure-seeking of wealthy, elite culture in the 2020s,” allowing people to justify indiscriminate sex and avoid the hard work of commitment. “No one can truly feel safe inside a marriage whose vows have an asterisk,” claim the authors of a piece distributed by the Institute for Family Studies. “Anyway, these people are crazy,” writes Rod Dreher, a former writer at The American Conservative.
These views of polyamory are dead wrong.
I am an anthropologist and licensed therapist, and I have spent the past seven years researching polyamory the way anthropologists do: by spending a lot of time with a lot of people who engage in it. I’ve interviewed more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth, and we talked about their experiences, motivations and aspirations, as well as regrets and lessons learned. I’ve heard about how polyamorists view themselves and the world, and I’ve observed what they do. And what I’ve found is, in many respects, supported by other scientific research—but not by popular perceptions.
First, polyamorists are not a privileged elite. They are more likely than monogamous people to earn less than $40,000 a year, according to one study, although they do tend to be more highly educated. They are regular folks. They have jobs and children. They run carpools and pay rent and go to the grocery store and watch the news. There is nothing inherently class-specific about the practice. (Nor is it limited to particular race or ethnic backgrounds, although the population skews white.)
Politically, polyamory is a rare place where the left and right meet: you might encounter a libertarian or a Donald Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders bro. The philosophy and practice of polyamory resonate with people across political divides and are not simply liberal indulgences—in fact, they tie into a libertarian and conservative ethos with deep roots in U.S. society, where people rebel against the powers that be telling them what to do.
Where popular portrayals of polyamory most miss the mark, though, is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, say the people involved in it, and it has ethics at its core. My observations support this claim, and so does other social science research. In a detailed 2021 study of 540 people published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, psychologist Jessica Wood of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada and her team found that relationships based primarily on sex are viewed negatively by many polyamorous people. People in these relationships prioritize mutual emotional support and opportunities for self-discovery. Respect, consent, trust, communication, flexibility and honesty are fundamental to these unconventional dynamics, according to a large review by researchers at Virginia Tech published in 2023.
“We are not sex-crazed freaks in some crazy lifestyle. We spend more time communicating than anything else.”
And these principles can have beneficial consequences. Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that polyamorists engage in safer sexual practices than the people who say they are monogamous—a quarter of whom reported having sexual relationships unknown to their partner—and this caution may reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections.
In short, polyamory is radically different from what many people may envision. Its current flourishing is not just a curiosity or random event: it indexes something important about this cultural moment and how people experience and value intimacy and relationships.
I am not an apologist for polyamory. I have been in such relationships in the past and had positive experiences, but I ultimately decided polyamory wasn’t for me. It activated some insecurities that I have spent years of my life working to heal, and I never felt that polyamory resonated deeply with my sense of who I am. For me, participating in polyamory successfully would take continual, deep work around old and familiar emotional wounds, and I simply wasn’t all in.
Clearly, however, other people are all in, and profound misunderstandings of polyamory have been circulating since its rise in popularity. Getting beyond such misconceptions offers a valuable opportunity to comprehend the power and importance of human needs for intimacy in a variety of forms.
Reality TV shows like The Bachelor, Love Is Blind and Say Yes to the Dress are popular for a reason—they tap into a dominant cultural narrative about “true love” and monogamy. The story is familiar: Someday we will find our one true love, the person who will “complete” us. They will be our best friend, lover, intellectual partner and emotional-support system all rolled into one. If we aren’t fulfilled, then there is something wrong.
Polyamory holds that what’s wrong is the very premise of monogamy in the first place. One person cannot possibly meet all our needs. “It’s like this,” Kris, a 37-year-old real estate agent, says. “We have groups of friends, right? Maybe one you go out dancing with on the weekends, another one is the person you call when you’ve had a horrible day; maybe someone else is a sports fan, so you go to ball games together. Totally normal, right? We don’t expect one friend to be our only friend, because we have different kinds of relationships with different people. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.”
Love, polyamory practitioners say, is similar. Like friendship, it is not a limited resource—it is additive. More love begets more love. “When you have multiple kids, you don’t love one of them less just because another one is born,” John, a 36-year-old business analyst, explains. “There’s enough love for all of them. You love them each for who they are uniquely.” A 2024 study by gender and sexuality scholar Jessica J. Hille of the Kinsey Institute and her colleagues highlights the flexible definitions of intimacy in polyamorous communities where intimacy is not always predicated on sex. Such relationships are common enough to have their own term, “platonic polyamory,” which describes connections with multiple people that may be deeply significant and intimate but not sexual.
And despite the perception that polyamory is justification for bed-hopping, polyamorous relationships are generally not fleeting. They might involve commitments that last months, years or a lifetime. A 2017 study of about 2,000 monogamous and nonmonogamous people found no difference in relationship length between the two groups, with an average length of slightly more than 10 years. They were also comparable on measures of relationship satisfaction, commitment and passionate love. This finding suggests polyamorous relationships can be just as fulfilling, meaningful and enduring as monogamous ones.
None of this means polyamorous relationships are easy. Jenna and Michael are in their late 40s and have been married for 23 years. In the summer of 2023 we sat down at a coffee shop in Nevada to talk about their journey to and through polyamory. For the first 10 years of their marriage Jenna and Michael were happily monogamous. Then things changed. Michael, a reservist in the armed forces, was deployed overseas and experienced a harrowing near-death incident. “After that,” Michael recounts, “I really thought a lot about my life and what I wanted. I realized that, among other things, I didn’t want to be monogamous anymore. I loved my wife more than anything and didn’t want out of the marriage. But coming that close to death made me realize how much more life there is for me to experience.”
Michael returned from his deployment and raised the issue of opening the marriage with Jenna. “She was not in favor at all,” Michael says. “She had a lot of fears and concerns, which is totally understandable. I did, too. So we read everything we could get our hands on about polyamory and talked to people we know who are in the lifestyle. We took it slowly. About a year after that initial discussion, we were both ready to open things up.”
“And how did it go?” I ask.
“Michael had a really hard time at first,” Jenna says, “even though it was his idea. Nothing can really prepare you for what it will feel like to see your partner go out without you. But to his credit, he didn’t just pull the plug. We worked through the issues together.”
“It was important for me to acknowledge my jealousy,” Michael says, “and for us to talk about it. But not like in monogamy—the point wasn’t to get Jenna to change her behavior. She wasn’t doing anything we hadn’t agreed to. Jealousy was my feeling to deal with and work through. I don’t own her. Jenna is her own person. It’s a big risk because it means trusting that your partner is still going to want to be with you even though they are free to have other relationships. But ultimately I’d rather she be with me because she chooses to, not because she’s locked into the relationship legally or morally.” Jenna adds that “it makes the relationship about who we are as people to each other and how we value each other, not just about rules about possession and exclusivity.”
Not all polyamorous relationships have a couple at their core. I talked with Kim, Mark and Marina at a polyamory conference in Denver in 2018. All were in their mid-30s and worked in various aspects of the food-service industry. Kim identifies as white, Mark as biracial (white/Black) and Marina as Latino. Kim and Mark had been together and polyamorous for four years before they met Marina. “When people see us together,” Marina begins, “I can tell they’re wondering, ‘What is the deal here?’ I think they assume that Mark is some alpha male with two chicks on his arm, but that’s not our situation at all. I’m a lesbian. I have no interest in sex with men—Kim and I are the ones who are involved sexually. And Kim with Mark. But Mark and I get along really well, and the three of us consider ourselves a unit. Mark dates other women as well, and it’s possible that in the future we would welcome one of his partners into our polycule.”
Klaus Kremmerz
Mark chimes in: “Kim and I have never been monogamous, so it wasn’t a matter of opening up. I knew Kim was bisexual when we got together and that she would have needs I can’t personally meet. I am totally fine with that.”
“Would you feel the same if Kim wanted to date a man?” I ask.
“Oh, I’ve dated men since we’ve been together,” Kim clarifies. “If Mark had had a problem with that, we wouldn’t be here. There are some men out there who do that, though—they’ll accept their girlfriends or wives having other partners but only if they’re women. It’s called having a ‘one penis policy.’ That’s considered unethical in the poly world because it’s one person making rules and controlling the intimate life of someone else, and it reinforces a bunch of patriarchal nonsense.”
Mark really wants to point out that the trio are normal people: “We’re not sex-crazed freaks or living some kind of crazy lifestyle. We spend a lot more time and energy communicating than anything else and making sure we are going about things ethically and with care for everyone involved.”
These observations from Kim, Mark and Marina match up well with those in sociologist Elisabeth Sheff’s 2013 book, The Polyamorists Next Door, based on more than 10 years of research. Sheff outlines the emotional demands of maintaining multiple intimate relationships, including constant negotiation, time-distribution challenges and emotional regulation. She finds that the mental and logistical work needed to keep polyamorous relationships functioning is significant, requiring practitioners to sustain a level of self-awareness and attunement above and beyond what is generally needed in monogamous relationships.
“In monogamy, people have a tendency to go on autopilot,” says Jesse, a 28-year-old bus driver. “You can’t do that in polyamory. You have to be extremely intentional all the time in every single relationship. Otherwise things could go bad fast.” Again, the research bears out these claims. A 2022 study by psychologist Thomas R. Brooks and his colleagues found that, compared with people in monogamous relationships, those in consensually nonmonogamous arrangements reported greater commitment, intimacy, love and passion in their relationships. They favored positive problem-solving with their partners, whereas monogamous participants often used withdrawal tactics.
As part of that intentionality—and the complexity of dealing with multiple people—polyamorous partners enter into relationship agreements about what is and is not permissible. People I interviewed described a range of agreements, such as using condoms with new partners until they have been tested for sexually transmitted infections, being respectful of a partner’s privacy and autonomy by not texting them while they’re out on a date, informing existing partners when they meet someone new, not talking about problems in one relationship with another partner, and so on.
The first and most important agreement, according to everyone I spoke with, is the promise to be honest about involvements with other people. Polyamorists say this openness distinguishes their behavior from cheating. Larissa, a 28-year-old college professor, had a lot to say on this subject. “People say polyamory is just a rationalization for cheating, but nothing could be further from the truth,” she says. “Cheating is about dishonesty, whereas polyamory is built on a foundation of truthfulness and transparency. A friend of mine had a partner she’d been seeing for about four years. They were totally open, free to date other people. Then she found out he’d been seeing a neighbor of theirs and hadn’t told her. That’s cheating. It’s absolutely possible to cheat in a poly dynamic. But why? He was free to date anyone he wanted to, as long as he was honest about it. He wasn’t. So that was the end of their relationship.”
The emphasis on autonomy, another key principle, renders unethical any attempt to control or restrict a partner’s behavior beyond issues of safety and respect. “No one should have control over someone else’s sexuality,” says André, a graduate student in his early 30s. “If you’re dictating who your partner can and can’t explore a connection with, that’s problematic.” Psychologists Denisa Derevjaniková and Gabriel Bianchi of the Slovak Academy of Sciences found, in research published in 2022, that this desire for autonomy was a primary motivator for many people to participate in polyamory in the first place; other psychological researchers have found that this sense of being able to control one’s own life contributes strongly to relationship satisfaction.
Power dynamics within poly arrangements are also of the utmost concern. For example, “unicorn hunting” (when a couple seeks a single woman to bring into their relationship as a third) is an ethical anathema in polyamory. “Unicorn hunting is considered unethical because it treats the single woman as, essentially, a sex toy for the couple,” Maria, an office worker in her mid-30s, explains. “And there’s a radical power differential between the couple and the third. They can just drop her anytime and still have each other. She’s in a really vulnerable situation there.”
Cowgirling (or cowboying) is yet another ethical violation, consisting of someone entering into a poly dynamic with the intent of “stealing away” one of the partners for a monogamous relationship. Aarti, a 29-year-old woman, had a close-up experience with cowgirling. She was going through a divorce at the time of our interview.
“My husband and I had been poly for several years with no problems, but then he started dating this new woman who had only been in monogamous relationships,” she says. “This was her first poly situation. She really had a hard time wrapping her head around it all. I felt a lot of empathy for her, so I bent over backward to try to make her feel comfortable. And things were okay but not great. Then, when the pandemic hit, we decided we would all move in together: him and her, and me and my girlfriend. The four of us. Boy, was that a mistake.”
There was a lot of jealousy and anxiety, Aarti says. “Finally, she told my husband she was moving out, and he could either come with her or not,” she says. “That’s when he told me he wanted a divorce, and he moved out with her.”
Aarti cites her husband’s girlfriend’s anxiety and jealousy as the core difficulty in their dynamic and as the ultimate catalyst of things falling apart. In her view, these feelings were associated with the girlfriend’s monogamous experiences and inability to make the shift to a polyamorous mindset. This idea is consistent with clinical psychologist Deborah Anapol’s finding, presented in her 2010 book Polyamory in the 21st Century, that emotional upheaval is common in the transition from monogamy to polyamory and that not everyone wants to or can make this shift. Psychologist Amy C. Moors of Chapman University and her colleagues reported in a 2019 paper that those with more anxious attachment styles tend to have lower relationship satisfaction in polyamorous relationships than those with more secure experiences of attachment, affirming the notion that polyamory is not necessarily “good” for everyone.
Aarti is adamant that a mismatch of needs and priorities, not polyamory itself, was the cause of the breakup. “It had nothing to do with us being poly,” she says. “Monogamous marriages end in divorce all the time, and no one says, ‘Aha! It’s because of monogamy!’ In our case, there were other problems in the relationship that had nothing to do with polyamory. When his girlfriend just couldn’t make the shift, I think he saw it as an easy way out, and he made a choice.”
It seems clear from my conversations with Tim, Kelly, Michael, Jenna, André, Maria, and dozens of other people who identify as polyamorous, as well as from the research on polyamorous practices, that most people don’t enter into this way of life lightly. People spend months, if not years, reading and learning about it before attempting it, and they continue to read books and consult with others in the lifestyle about how to best navigate different situations.
And despite some of its antiestablishment appearances, polyamory is, in many ways, a quintessential expression of American individualism. Each person is their own free agent, cultivating connections and relationships to meet their needs, which allows for maximum personalization and flexibility. “Polyamory is really about building relationships that suit you,” says Carl, a 42-year-old lawyer.
In this way, the burgeoning polyamory movement is in step with other 21st-century social transformations such as the move from network television to online streaming, the preference for online shopping over going to the mall, or the rise of Uber and Lyft. It’s all about personalization. When we make a Spotify playlist for the gym, for example, we control the mood, the vibe and the experience. It is tailored to our specific tastes and needs. People want control over what they invest time and money in, and they want personalized experiences that they find meaningful. They don’t want corporations, the music industry, the government, or other social institutions—such as monogamy—to dictate what they should like and what options they can choose from. In this regard, the rising interest in polyamory over the past decade is not evidence of a fad so much as it is part of a larger cultural shift in how people relate to their own desires and to their willingness and ability to pursue those goals.
The human need for intimacy seems to be universal. But it is also complicated. What intimacy means to someone and why it matters depend on many things—not only personal disposition and physiological, emotional and intellectual needs but also what that individual learns from our culture about acceptable forms of connection.
A big lesson of polyamory is that our mainstream models of love and intimacy are not as rooted in nature as we might assume. There are alternative ways of living and loving that, for many people, can open up new opportunities for fulfillment, joy and social connection that exceed the boundaries of traditional relationships. Such approaches can be challenging, but what’s important is that they also can be engaged in ethically and successfully for everyone involved.Author: Josh Fischman. Rebecca J. Lester. Source
