My Videos on Poly/Mono Relationships and Resolving Jealousy on KinkAcademy.com

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Camilla of The Daily Loaf on Jealousy and Polyamory

As many people know, I am a frequent presenter at poly and alternative sexuality conferences on managing jealousy in polyamorous relationships. I'm always interested in hearing others' perspectives on the subject, and today the online publication Creative Loafing has published a very good column on the subject. (I am also flattered to be mentioned as a resource.)

I also love the graphic they've added. No, it doesn't always look like this - but we do have our blissful moments!

From the article, here's a great example of a wise strategy for sorting out one's own feelings when jealousy is making itself felt. Kudos to Camilla (and thanks for the props!)

Now, I sometimes hold off on talking to the lover in question until I can answer two questions:

a) What am I actually pissy about?

b) Why am I pissy about this?

Once I can answer those two questions, I’m more likely to communicate my feelings better. That’s not to say that answering those two questions results in smooth sailing. Mr. Chaotic is still jealous/envious of the amount of time The Puppy gets to see me. The Puppy and I are still prone to mistranslating the other’s concerns as jealousy. We’re just better at dealing with it now than we were years before.

Join Me for Reid's Day of Jealousy Teleclasses

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Polyamory and Jealousy on wikiHow

How to Practise Polyamory

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit


I've just discovered wikiHow, a fascinating repository based on the Wikipedia model where you can find info and write articles on how to do just about anything. Articles include everything from how to create a wreathe to how to supress the gag reflex (hmmm - could come in handy, that), to, yes, how to practice polyamory and how to stop being jealous. Both of the latter two topics are fairly brief and straightforward. The jealousy article isn't presented in a poly context but nevertheless makes many important and accurate points. One must look elsewhere for more indepth treatments of these subjects, but wikiHow gives enough info to get one thinking in the right direction.

Next wikiHow article for me to review - how not to look like an American tourist (in anticipation of traveling to Europe in summer 2009).

Compersion for Beginners on YourTango.com

There's a good article on compersion on the women's sex and love webzine YourTango.com. I love that this subject - something most people have never heard of or even imagined - is being explored on a women's mainstream venue. Too cool. It concludes with the following words:

These women are unapologetically happy with their non-monogamous relationships, and compersion appears to be a cherished benefit of this lifestyle. For these women, love is not a zero-sum game; it can be shared and enjoyed across multiple people in non-traditional formats.

It's great to be one of those women!

The Nature of Jealousy: The Whys and Hows and Whos

I'm researching jealousy in order to expand my understanding and teaching materials and write a book on the subject. I've presented a program on making peace with jealousy in polyamorous relationships probably 20 times or more over the last few years and have helped others deal with jealousy in their lives more times than I can count. So I've heard a lot of personal stories. What I know about the subject is partly from personal experience, partly from the experiences of others, and partly from what I've read from those who are experts in the field.

I even have references - check out Avah's comment to the blog entry on jealousy here. I've never before been referred to as "the sh*t", at least not to my knowledge and not in a good way. (grin)

It is well documented that jealousy is indeed hard wired into humans. Even Oprah's expert, Dr. Gail Saltz, said this on an episode that included a poly couple and recently re-aired. She actually acknowledged that humans are not hard wired for monogamy, but she cautioned that what we *are* hard wired for is jealousy and possessiveness. (More about the hard-wiring she references below.) The fact that jealousy is inate is observed even in little children, who must be taught to share toys, their mothers, etc. My daughter is preparing for that challenge with her entirely self-centered 2 y.o. (self-centeredness being consistent with what is known about 2 year olds and early childhood development) when the baby she is expecting arrives at the end of the year, for example.

My understanding thus far is that jealousy is a primitive emotion that originates in the amigdula, a/k/a the reptilian brain, which is also responsible for our fight or flight response. It developed/evolved as a protective mechanism over the millenia, with anthropologists believing it served primitive humans at a time when mates and resources necessary for safety and survival of the family and the species were scarce and the world was a very dangerous place. Yet survival of the species also depended on humans spreading their reproductive resources around in a very non-monogamous fashion. This explains how it is that we can quite happily have more than one mate ourselves while at the same time feeling uncomfortable sharing a mate with others. IT IS NOT A RATIONAL IMPULSE - but it is a human one.

It is also well documented that human biology hasn't changed over the millenia enough for it to make any noticeable difference as far as our base instincts and emotions are concerned. Certainly we are much more highly civilized than our ancient ancestors, and we can and do control our emotional and behavioral reactions to a large degree, but just about everyone struggles from time to time with the emotions that make up jealousy. They are a natural part of being human, but that doesn't mean we must remain at their mercy and have them ruin our relationships.

Also, that doesn't mean that everyone feels jealous. Some people, a minority, seem to be immune, and the reasons for that are not well understood. I suspect that those lucky people who don't experience it find polyamory especially appealing, and for obvious reasons, so it's not uncommon to encounter people in our community who say they never feel jealous. It's a lot less of a challenge for them.

Certainly social conditioning plays a role in how we experience and express jealousy. Our society reinforces it and even idolizes and makes a fetish of it in some ways. It tells us when we are little that there is one special person out there who we will find one day, who is our soul mate with whom we will live happily ever after. No wonder we get jealous when we perceive a threat after we think we've found "the one." Jealous partners are often encouraged to act out their anger, especially if they've been wronged by a partner who has broken a promise of monogamy. It's everywhere, in our popular music, movies, TV, books, magazines. In fact, it is so common and so much taken for granted that most of us don't even give it much thought when it is part of a story line. So as I like to say, we are all marinated in a culture that tell us from an early age that jealous feelings are OK and even justified. In some ways it is put up on a pedestal - as recently as the early 1970s, a man who killed his wife who he caught with another man was not guilty of murder in the State of Texas but instead of a lesser crime. (Women, however, WERE guilty of murder, hence another reason that law is now history.)

As to the part insecurity and low self-esteem play, yes, these are another layer of complexity in the way jealousy is expressed and resolved (though they are far from the sole source of jealous reactions and feelings, as I've illustrated above.) That's why in the program I give I talk a lot about making sure existing relationships are healthy and that all partners have reason to feel generally secure in their heart and in their partner(s)' love, no matter who else their partner may also love. I urge people to work on trust if there are trust issues, as these are incompatible with resolving jealousy. I also urge people who aren't very self aware to become so, and to engage in self-help and/or see a therapist to deal with any serious self-esteem and/or abandonment issues they may have. These are also incompatible with resolving jealousy. There is no reason for self-blame if these exist. Bad things happen to us, sometimes from experiences with former partners, with our parents, etc., that can set us up to feel insecure. It stinks, but it doesn't mean we have to live with it for the rest of our lives. But it does mean that with all the factors I reference here, these emotional issues can and likely will make managing jealousy in poly relationships a greater challenge than it would be otherwise.

The handout from my jealousy program can be found on my website under Downloadable Documents. As I learn more about the anthropological underpinnings of jealousy, I plan to add that information to it.

Poly Jealousy Survey Participants Needed

Rachel Clark is a final year Applied Psychology student at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and is conducting research concerning jealousy in polyamorous relationships. Her survey is limited to questions for people who use the primary/secondary relationship structure, I imagine for good reason, since polyamorous relationships take so many forms that the data would be difficult to quantify without such specifics.

If you are in a poly relationship and use the primary/secondary model, please take a few minutes and complete the survey - it's vitally important to learn more about jealousy in poly relationships, since this is understandably the highest hurdle to cross in making polyamory work for the average poly person. You can find the survey here.

This research is especially important to me as a poly educator who regularly presents programs on resolving jealousy in polyamorous relationships and who is making plans to write a book on the subject in 2008. If this subject interests you, feel free to download my handout and bibliography on it here.

Jealousy and Murder in Pennsylvania Muslim Polygamous Family

Of course, this woman is innocent until proven guilty, but if the charges are accurate, wow, what a great example of what exactly not to do if you want your spice to get along with each other. I also find it interesting that she is wearing a full burka with only her eyes showing - I wonder if she wears it all the time or whether in this case it serves to protect her from the media's prying eyes.

Bigamist's First Wife Charged With Killing Him on Eve of Trip to Impregnate Second Wife

Sugasm #88 - Great Issue!

I'm in Sugasm #88. See below. No, it's not a great issue because I'm in it - it really IS a great issue, lots of steamy stuff, along with a fair amount of intellectual foreplay.

To see all the great sex blog entries in a variety of categories, go here.

Mon 16th Jul, 07

This Week’s Picks

Kinky To Vanilla“Now, each time we play with others, it’s a gift that further cements our closeness and shows us the value of our love.”

One For The Guys“Get into the habit of building your sexual pleasure and indulging in it fully.”

When A Client Dies-Part 2
“As I drank my morning coffee I googled his name and “obit”. Up popped his obituary.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
A Porn Store Clerk Speaks

Editor’s Choice
Love at First Sight

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Bald = hot
Kinky Vanilla
On abandon
The Origins of Monogamy and Jealousy
Pretendy Sex
Seduction - from the eyes of my spouse
Three years

The Origins of Monogamy and Jealousy

Someone wrote the following to me yesterday.

You obviously have approached this subject with a scholarly bent and seem to know quite a bit. I have thought a lot about it too and I have, from time to time, dabbled in Sociology and Social Psychology. I have a sort of negative, flip-side question for you: what do you think the origins and purposes of monogamy are? For the life of me, I cannot see how monogamy serves any real purpose except to guarantee mates for the less-advantaged males. What do you think?

Well, certainly your observation about monogamy serving to guarantee mates for less-advantaged males is accurate according to Psychology Today.

Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy.

When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.

Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

Once upon a time when there were certainly no DNA tests to confirm paternity, monogamy was intended to guarantee blood lines so that wealth and property was kept in the family. How well that worked in reality is likely another story, but it did give (or was at least was intended to give) men control over who inherited property, since the right of women to own property is a much more recent development.

Monogamy's origins are also firmly rooted in Europe and the Catholic church. The church enforced monogamy as an aspect of virtue according to the gospel of St. Paul and other biblical sources who believed that Eve seduced Adam into sin and so women needed to be dominated and controlled to save them from sin. This also served to help men avoid feelings of jealousy by keeping their women to themselves, and women bought into it as well, perceiving that they preferred to keep their men to themselves, even as they were attracted to other men and tempted to stray - just as, in reality, were their men. The church declared that temptation to stray was a sin, and that monogamy was divinely mandated. Again, this was the church's way of controlling its parishoners and maintaining it's own power and authority.

From an evolutionary biological standpoint, humans are programmed to pair bond for the raising of children, though anthropologists believe we have never done so entirely monogamously. There is a reproductive advantage to spreading one's reproductive resources around to others, generally others perceived to be healthy - which explains why men in particular are so attracted to women younger than they. We women have a finite number of eggs and a finite number of years in which to put them to use - not so for men.

Next we throw into the mix the matter of sexual jealousy. This is not even remotely new in evolutionary terms and is believed to have developed as a further means of keeping parents together for the raising of children, especially in order to see that children are protected and provided for at least until they are out of the cradle. Some anthropologists assert that this explains why biologically limerence, that "in love" rush of emotions, eventually wears off, preparing us to then be attracted to others so as to continue to spread reproductive resources around to other attractive, i.e. reproductively viable, partners.

For more on all this, see the book references on the website for the Institute for 21st Century Relationships, specifically here and here.

I recommend the works of anthropologist Helen Fisher, especially her book "Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray", as well as the book "Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice" by Wiesner-Hanks.

Sexual jealousy makes monogamy seem like a good idea, yet we are just as biologically programmed to stray outside the pair bond to further guarantee perpetuation of our species. In other words, it is normal to want to keep our partner to ourselves while we decline to remain monogamous ourselves. It seems that human evolution is entirely focused on outcomes and is not concerned with the internal conflict it may create in attaining them.

In my work with polyamorous people on resolving jealousy, I have encountered a few who are honest enough to fully admit that they want to be with others but are not willing to share their partner with others while admitting that it is unfair. A very few bisexual folks with straight partners take this approach as well, pointing out a need for one of each as justification for being with more than one while their straight partner has no such right or imperative. In both cases the motivation is to avoid feelings of jealousy while getting their need for variety met. These folks are definitely in the minority, at least as to their willingness to admit to these rationalizations. The vast majority of non-monogamous people share these feelings but are much more philosophically egalitarian. They choose to deal with concerns about jealousy more directly, by doing internal emotional work, communicating with their partner(s) about their feelings, and in so doing finding ways to minimize or resolve their feelings in a way that is fair to everyone.

Whole Lotta Love in Salon.com

I am delighted with the article on polyamory published on Salon.com yesterday entitled "Whole Lotta Love". As it happens, I and several other polyamory spokespeople have been working with the journalist who wrote it for several months. (I am quoted in the beginning of the article.) She did a wonderful, even-handed job with it, something we haven't always gotten from the media. In the bad old days, mostly we were sensationalized via the open sexual component of polyamory, which is just one of the aspects of it that bear examination in order to fully understand the concept of polyamory. So to Liz Langley and the folks at Salon.com, I again say a big thank you!

The comments following the article are very interesting. There is a lot of harsh negativity, some more tolerant voices, and then there are the polyfolk who are doing an excellent job of explaining in detail the more subtle but no less vital parts of the polyamory concept that are impossible to convey in an article in soundbites. And then there's the emotional underpinning that I believe is largely responsible for the strongest and more defensive negative reactions. Here is the response I posted.

When polyamory is the subject of a news article, certain assertions are invariably quickly made, i.e. that polyamory is just an excuse for cheating, it's bad for the kids, it's bound to result in the spread of STDs, and so forth. Polyamory as a concept clearly evokes fear in some folks. This is understandable. It scares we polyamorists, too, sometimes, and we want it, so it isn’t difficult to imagine how someone not so inclined might feel if their partner came home one day and said “Honey, I’m interested in polyamory, would you consider giving it a try?”

We are all subject to the fear of loss those words inspire because we’ve all been marinated in the same culture that has told us since we were born that love is scarce and must be hoarded. When you add to that the anthropological fact that possessiveness was once a useful behavior for perpetuating the species, the urge for which still exists in the reptilian part of the brain called the amigdula, no wonder the idea is very unsettling.

What there wasn't room to elaborate about is that though we polyamorists sometimes feel the same fear of loss and so forth, we choose to work through those emotions, be great poly parents, etc. In other words, we work hard to transcend the challenging parts because we know others who have done it, that we can succeed at this and in doing so satsify both the human need to pair bond as well as the human need for sexual variety.

One of the posters expressed resentment at their perception that polyamorists give the impression that they believe they are more highly evolved than monogamists. Over the course of eleven years I've only heard a small number of comments from polyfolk I would consider to rise to the level of snottyness being perceived, so I'm a bit bemused by how often I encounter this accusation from non-polys. Some of it comes from general resentment toward us over what they perceive is our shaking up their seemingly safe monogamous world. I also wonder whether to mono folk it seems that when we talk about what we have to do to deal with our emotions and other challenges of being good at polyamory, we are automatically perceived by some to be raising the bar without their consent in terms of relationship skills required to be competent relationship partners of any sort. I'm definitely going to make further inquiries about this as I'm always looking for better ways to craft our public message so that it resonates and doesn't put people off. Comments on this especially welcome.

Love = Sacrifice?

It is my personal belief that proving love for another through sacrificing personal happiness is not what love is. I certainly get no satisfaction out of a partner sacrificing their own happiness for me, quite the opposite. My hope and intention as a partner is to do all I can to support that which gives my partner happiness. Doing so can and has at times cost me a bit in terms of comfort level, but the discomfort always passes.

So, my personal boundary is well short of being willing to sacrifice personal happiness beyond that point. It's not that my partner(s) aren't worth some sacrifice. It's that thinking that love = sacrifice is an example of the unhealthy influence of mainstream monogamy and religious dogma-inspired life. It is anethema to the concept that love = abundance. Most mindfully poly people I know get the difference, which is significant.