NYTimes: Lessons from a 20-person "polycule"

The word “polycule” is a synthesis of polyamory — engaging in multiple romantic relationships — and molecule. It’s not clear when the word was coined, but it seems to have started catching on around 15 years ago to suggest an intricate structure formed of people with overlapping deep attachments: romantic, sexual, sensual, platonic. It’s difficult to describe a polycule. Words like “family” and “network” are used, but neither on its own captures it. Perhaps it’s best left to a polycule itself to offer descriptions. These are the voices and images of people who are part of a polycule in the Boston area.

Describing the Polycule

Katie: The polycule is like this weird family.

Ann: It’s chosen family. It works like complex kinship networks work — just a little kinkier. It reflects radical queer values.

Katie: Our polycule is large, 20 or a little more — people in their mid-20s to mid-40s. There are self-identified males who identify as heteroflexible, heterosexual, bisexual. There’s a nonbinary person. Every femme-presenting person or woman identifies as queer. A lot of people are married and have primary partnerships. They’re coming to it from the opening of a monogamous relationship.

Ashley: A bunch of couples met in the summer of 2020. Over the next year, we were all dating and developing friendships with several couples and individuals that eventually blossomed into this community. It’s an evolving organism that looks entirely different from everyone’s perspective.

Ann: It’s definitely not a fixed or closed thing, and the relations and connections have shifted and grown and continue to do so.

Nico: Our polycule is female-run. It’s the female-identified people who spearhead. We convene, we plan, we call the shots. It’s a bunch of queer women who say we’re not going to follow the rules.

Katie: It’s freedom. I am so grateful to be a part of it. I have this abundance of love to give. I feel so in my power. We all approach ENM, ethical nonmonogamy, differently. Everyone is so deeply in love with each other, whether or not it’s romantic love.

Relationships With More Than One Person

Katie: I started by dating somebody on an ENM app who was in a different polycule who was connected to someone in this polycule. And then I started dating someone else in this polycule. He’s married, and his wife and I are metamours, which is simply a word for my partner’s partner. People have established relationships, people have newer relationships, and there are abiding deep friendships that are sometimes sensual, sometimes sexual, sometimes romantic, sometimes platonic.

M (Katie’s main partner): I identified as a single guy. I went from that to dating nonmonogamously. And I fell in love with someone who was already in love with more than one other person. The fear of abandonment that I’d been programmed from Day 1 to expect, I had a huge amount of stress about that. And of expressing too much anxiety. I spent a lot of time suffering alone during the first months because I didn’t want to overwhelm my new partner and have them realize, Hey, you know what, this is just too much of a pain in the ass, and I need you to do more work to reach the level where you need to be.

Nico: I was enthralled in college with gender-studies theory. I started to articulate that I was queer. I identify anywhere from femme to nonbinary, depending on the day. My pronouns are she/they. Gender studies is where I realized that nonmonogamy was an option. I had a professor who showed us this wheel about the accepted forms of sexuality and gender identity, and at the outside of the wheel were all the forms that aren’t accepted. And I was like, Oh, I fall into the outside.

(cont.)

(cont.)

Ann: I’m 34, and I feel like I’ve been on and off nonmonogamous much of my life, even though I didn’t have the word. When I was 17, 18, I said free love. Around 2018, 2019, I swore off monogamy forevermore. I use the word “polyamorous,” though relationship anarchist is probably a more accurate representation.

My husband and I are very, very different, which is our strength. He’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd. In the beginning, we did all the typical stuff. Read the books on nonmonogamy, did the relationship check-ins. We’d sit down, take notes. We did every exercise in the books, listened to every podcast. We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing. That gave us great communication tactics.

Robert (Ann’s husband): We have this motto: Feelings are not facts. That gets us through the hard times.

At the start, I was going through some depression, and when we had sex I had so much stress. There were issues in the bedroom with her, and that happened many times, which caused more stress. She started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time, and I felt totally lame and inadequate.

That was really hard for me, for obvious reasons. I felt like, I’m a hundred percent replaceable. It took a lot of conversations. She was like, There’s nothing wrong with you, this is going to pass, therapy will help. Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me, talk therapy helped me, changing the way we do things helped. That’s where feelings are not facts really mattered. Because I would ask her questions, and she would be like, No, I don’t feel that way; and I would be like, I know you like being with him more than me; and she would say, I’m not lying to you, it’s different, but it doesn’t make me love you less, you provide so much more to my life than just sex. I totally get it now. That was the first instance of feelings are not facts. They feel like it. But they ain’t facts.

Setting Boundaries

Bine: My husband and I met about 15 years ago as undergrads, fell in love and decided to get married. We had discussed opening up our relationship to a potential third, because I identified as bi, and that was important to me. And then five years into our marriage, he was the one to start talking about ethical nonmonogamy. At that point we were saying, Let’s just have some fun, but ours is really the primary relationship.

There were a lot of restrictions. I felt very insecure, like if we’re going to do this there’s going to have to be a laundry list of rules. It can be a one-night stand, but we’re not going to see this person again. It can’t be a friend. But it became clear that these rules didn’t make any sense. We felt deeper connections with people beyond the sexual. We had to shift things, and we kind of drifted into the polyamorous space in 2018.

Resources always help, books like “The Ethical Slut” and “Polysecure.” But undoing the monogamous script, the socialization, is really, really difficult.

Katie: There’s a lot of boundary-setting. Broken rules can be really damaging. Adhering to other people’s boundaries is a big part of being in the polycule. That’s paramount. In the polycule, it ranges from people who really don’t have rules to we’re only going to date people together or we’re going to participate in the group only as friendships, or as sensual friendships, or we’re only going to be sexually intimate at gatherings, and outside of that we’re not going to date anyone individually. We keep track in group chats. We also gather as a group for parties that are sometimes intentionally sexual but sometimes not at all, and that is a time for people to communicate about their interests. But group chats are big.

(cont.)

The New York Times needs to fold already.

(cont.)

Making Time for Multiple Partners

M: The capacity to love is not a finite thing. But time is. You can’t do two things at once.

Bine: Scheduling can be very tricky. Making sure there’s still one or two evenings every week when we spend quality time together. Overnights is something we’re discussing now. We don’t sleep over individually with anyone we’re dating; we only do that when we’re dating someone together.

Ann: My husband, my nesting partner, is the person I own a home with. I also have life-partnership friends, I call them my wives, who are core members in the polycule. One of their husbands is one of my best friends and occasional sexual partner, and I do have sex with my wives, but we’re not romantically involved. But I love them.

I don’t ask anyone’s permission on anything. I spend 60 percent of my time in my house with my nesting partner and about 25 percent of my time with another partner, and although I technically have one home right now, I’m in the process of building homes with multiple partners. There are check-ins, but the check-ins aren’t for permission. It’s, I’m doing these things, I’m going to be gone for these two weeks, what do you need from me?

Katie: Poly-saturation is different for different people. For me, the maximum seems to be three partners at once, especially because I gravitate toward long-term committed in-depth relationships. I mean romantic partners. We have play parties that are intended to be a sexual space but more of a casual connection, and I’m not only with my partners there.

Benefits of the Polycule

Robert: We have a lot of compersion — being happy seeing your partner happy with one of their other partners — for each other. There are times when my wife will meet someone she knows I’ll be attracted to, and she’ll say, You have to meet my husband. She’ll wingman me. Or I’m talking to this guy, and I think, She would really like this guy. We do that for each other.

Bine: There’s something that feels radical about it, that feels liberating, that really speaks to empowerment, especially for women or queer or nonbinary individuals. It’s loving people in a very unapologetic way, not conforming to norms. We know why monogamy is still the dominant structure. The patriarchy. The lack of rights women had. As a woman, and as a queer woman, being able to live my life as authentically as possible without needing my husband’s permission, that’s empowering.

Nico: I was in a very bad car accident in the fall, and I felt so supported. I had 20 text messages from people in the polycule — this is the doctor I know, this is the lawyer I have, this is the physical therapist, so many resources.

Ann: I have one partner now with three kids. He is transmasc, and he’s radical about the way he raises them. They’re radically home-schooled. They’re 17 and nonbinary, 6 and 5. They know everything in age-appropriate ways. They’ve seen their mommy undergo the transmasc experience, seen their mom become who they really are.

I was up late last night with him in a hotel room, and the 17-year-old was in the room snoozing, so we just sat on the bathroom floor chatting about our relationship all night, and while that was happening my husband was texting to say, Oh, I got a last-minute match, so I’m going to meet this girl for a date. And then I get a text while we were still on the bathroom floor vibing, it was 4 in the morning, and he said, We had a great date, a great connection, she’s looking for friends with benefits, we had sex. And I was smiling. You know you’re really poly when you’re with one of your partners talking about how much you love each other and you’re so happy your husband had this awesome night. Of course, I experience pangs of jealousy, but there are these moments, these gems, of being so happy for someone else’s happiness.

(cont.)

Just reading that was EXHAUSTING.

(cont.) Katie: Last night I was at a party that was full of poly people, and at the end of the night we wound up in this big cuddle pile. There were eight of us fit together like puzzle pieces, snuggling. It felt so cozy, so much oxytocin flowing. We were all envisioning living together, not having to worry about individual mortgages, just having some big house. Can’t we just do that? Why can’t we do that? An adult sleepover camp, that’s the vibe. It is my mission to make that happen for me and whoever wants to join me.

Poly as an Identity or a Movement or Both

Ashley: Whenever you veer outside the confines of the status quo, it is political. We’re really intentional about the way we want to connect, really questioning why one type of relationship has to be more significant than others. For the first time in my life, I’ve found community, in a true sense. These are people who really show up for each other in beautiful ways, people who aren’t guarded around each other. It’s just pure love. I can’t imagine my life without it now.

Ann: It is very much about social change. It is about making the world a better place. I want to be in relationships and be with people who make me live in this world better.

Nico: Some of us are survivors of sexual assault and have reclaimed what it means to be a sexual woman, to be radically and unapologetically ourselves. Some don’t really ever have sex — I think there is a power in female sexuality that doesn’t necessarily mean having a lot of sex; I don’t know how to explain that. It’s about making decisions for yourself, how you want your relationships to look.

The men are important; they do have value. What has been valuable is being around men who want to be around empowered women, who aren’t intimidated. It’s not like they’re wimpy guys — to me, they’re strong because they’re not threatened.

There are so many things we’re pushing against, but we still have to live within. My husband and I married for the legal benefits, for taxes and things like that. Our society’s laws benefit married people. But I’ve talked to my girlfriend about us being married as well, and while that can’t be legal right now, we would like to have that for ourselves, maybe a small ceremony, rings on the other hand, something that signifies our bond and our life commitment. In Somerville, which is the city right next to mine, the city legally recognizes multiple domestic partners. I think our society is moving toward that, but it’s a slow process.

Katie: I hope this is a social movement. I hope people will feel more freedom about how they want to live and about pooling resources and living their best life. The structure of the nuclear family, the nuclear marriage, needs to shift. It’s really hard to afford a house. Some of us are thinking of moving into a place with four or five bedrooms where eight or nine of us could live together. We could share the burden of bills. It’s just more realistic. And it would be a community space. We would hold events and gather and play and have this endless sleepover. If I get to do this, I will have achieved something great — great emotionally and great in terms of social transformation.

Ever noticed the people that describe themselves as poly are always ugly to at best sub-average looking? Its weird you can have an open relationship or just fuck around and look fine, but swingers and polys generally seem to be unfortunate looking.

These people are gross.

[quote]The structure of the nuclear family, the nuclear marriage, needs to shift. It’s really hard to afford a house. Some of us are thinking of moving into a place with four or five bedrooms where eight or nine of us could live together. We could share the burden of bills. It’s just more realistic. And it would be a community space.

What happens to the other eleven or twelve of them then?

This is always the problem. Someone gets left out.

Heather Has Ten Mommies.

Concubines!

Whatever blows your skirt up.

R7. You are so right—my 50-year-old stepdaughter is involved in the “poly” scene in Texas and it’s the case that she’s meeskite who could never make a marriage or long-term relationship succeed but is popular because she takes all comers. She’s shallow and bipolar/borderline/NPD which makes the poly life a perfect fit for her pathologies. I honestly don’t care what she does, but poly people seem to insist on taking about the superiority of their lives when no one is interested in visions of her being spit-roasted by guys on the spectrum. And when she’s 60, I doubt many of the men will continue to be interested in her close, even if she is generous with the party drugs she provides her “friends.”

NY Times alerts are preposterous. I got one for this exhausting nonsense on my phone, yet never got one regarding the earthquake.

"We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called 'agile scrum,' which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing."

These people make the Michfest womyn look easygoing. Nothing is worth this Maoist torture; not sex, not anything.

All these terms...I wonder if it makes them feel important saying them.

r17, actually, i think it does. It's exactly like the plethora of weird terms in Scientology: using them makes you feel like you're speaking a secret lingo and that you belong to an elect society.

This sounds exhausting, not enlightening.

Fuck all that bullshit.

This has potential for a cult written all over it.

I wish the article addressed things like what if there are disagreements/fights - is there a vote to expel someone from the polycule, or how are these relationships managed?

Also curious to know what happens if someones STD test comes back positive, or how do they co-ordinate testing and knowing everyones status?

The guy who needed therapy and medication to deal with his feelings about this, and the wife basically cucking him in the interview...yikes

Polycule was such a gross word to me even before I learned what it meant. All I see in my mind are sticky slimy beehive holes whenever I come across that term.

"There’s something that feels radical about it, that feels liberating, that really speaks to empowerment, especially for women or queer or nonbinary individuals." Can these pretentious fucks go two sentences without saying "queer" or "radical"?

"Resources always help, books like “The Ethical Slut” and “Polysecure.” But undoing the monogamous script, the socialization, is really, really difficult." How edgy, you read the Ethical Slut!

" Our polycule is female-run. It’s the female-identified people who spearhead. We convene, we plan, we call the shots. It’s a bunch of queer women who say we’re not going to follow the rules." So it's female identified people or females? Because yeah, a dude in a skirt asking you to let him bang a bunch of other chicks is not at all radical or feminist.

Attractive people never do this shit; it’s always lardasses with colored hair and an overabundance of piercings and tattoos to make up for the lack of a personality.

R23 You rang?

Fat chick, green haired guy, huge chest tats.

These people are irritating as hell. So much rule making and discussion, how has someone not snapped and wasted everyone in the house? Wait, is that what will eventually happen here?

Why’d they put the blond uggo in the middle of the photo? The other women are better looking.

Ann should spell her name with an E. Miss no nonsense.. I want to hear from the stud blowing her back out. Is he in that too?

I don't see any pics. The NY post one just has a stock footage video. Are any of them cute? Are most of them dudes?

Just what I need. Nineteen people to pick up after.

They have a fucking group chat...how do they have jobs? It seems like they just talk about their relationships and text all day. They're trying soooo hard to be edgy and cool: I was up late last night with him in a hotel room, and the 17-year-old was in the room snoozing, so we just sat on the bathroom floor chatting about our relationship all night, and while that was happening my husband was texting to say, Oh, I got a last-minute match, so I’m going to meet this girl for a date. And then I get a text while we were still on the bathroom floor vibing, it was 4 in the morning, and he said, We had a great date, a great connection, she’s looking for friends with benefits, we had sex. And I was smiling.

Were you? What a cool wife you are! And what a hip aunt, hanging with the 17 year old in a hotel and just chatting. I notice a few are married though, for legal stuff and tax reasons...sure. You guys are just more of the same "queer" hetero married people, trying so hard to not be boring, but you are.

Maybe it’s a group of people who all like talking and talking and talking till they’re dead as a common bond. Somehow all this blabbering leads to sex? I don’t know, I’m reaching. I can’t see how anyone would last five minutes in a room with any of them without dying of boredom.

I'm going to break from the general opinion expressed on this here thread and say that I can see the appeal of some of this. Sure a lot of the language is pretty pretentious and overblown, but there are some parts that I do relate to like this here;

[quote]Katie: Last night I was at a party that was full of poly people, and at the end of the night we wound up in this big cuddle pile. There were eight of us fit together like puzzle pieces, snuggling. It felt so cozy, so much oxytocin flowing. We were all envisioning living together, not having to worry about individual mortgages, just having some big house. Can’t we just do that? Why can’t we do that? An adult sleepover camp, that’s the vibe. It is my mission to make that happen for me and whoever wants to join me.

This bit in particular I could imagine doing, perhaps not with a mixed gender group but maybe with an all male one? All living together in a lovely big old Victorian pile, just need to find a few others that share my tastes for that kind of thing

I’m going to just not and say I did.

We used to just call these “communes” and “cults.”

My former neighbor who had to move out of NY has a son who’s schizoaffective and he’s joined one of these things. But only after he returned from Ukraine where he’d taken off to volunteer as a cater worker.

I remember how a guy from high school was sent to jail for weed and a few hits of acid. There was a commune near the prison. One day the commune turned into Jesus freaks. The girls started visiting the prisoners to convert them. The guy I went to school with married one of the girls and became a Jesus freak. These people are easily swayed. One day they’re hippies making love and smoking weed. A week later they’re fundamentalists following a hellfire and brimstone preacher.

These easily fooled, easily swayed people are why religion continues to exist.

I've also noticed many of these are basically unattractive people.

It's clear that these are not ordinary people like us, the mindless herd. No, these are very, very special and extraordinary folx. Unlike ordinary people, their minds are open and not closed like the stunted intellects of the bourgeoisie. They see the myriad thrilling possibilities of life; they are distinct from the grey ones like us who shuffle to and fro in their rutted tracks, brainlessly following the paths set out for them.

Yes, indeed, these are very very VERY special people who should be praised and celebrated for their extreme and liberating specialness. No amount of ink spilled or think pieces can do justice to the amazing transgressiveness on display here.

Exhausting, you say? Boring? HA! You're just jealous! Has the Times written about YOUR sex life? Didn't think so.

Nothing is new under the sun

R7 might be some kind of special skills effect

In a few years, we'll see another NYT article about the "consent abuse" that went on in this group, and in an amazing coincidence, all the complainants will be People With Vaginas and all the abusers will be the kind of humans we used to call "straight guys".

This will go out the wayside with Gen B. They’ll be like “We’re gonna wait until marriage and then another 5 years, because why not?”

Poly people always think they’re so edgy but they’re really no different than swingers from the 70s not to mention that poly relationships have been around thousands of years. Religions like Mormonism and Islam have always embraced it.

I think serial monogamy is probably the best option for most people. I don’t buy into “til death do us part” but trying to maintain a “relationship” with 50 people doesn’t sound like the answer, either.

Every poly person I’ve ever met has been deeply insecure and defensive about their lifestyle.

All their rules and self-importance make the idea of a "polycule" approximately as sexy as becoming a Mormon to me. Remember that these two were part of one. Self-importance? check. Ugly people? check.

Is there a single '5' or above amongst them?

Wow, their Boomer parents really did a number on them with, "That's so GAY!" didn't they? The Under-45s can't even say the g-word.

Back in the day, any group of gay friends who frequented the gay bars/clubs and any other gay venues were practically a polycule. Most of us have had sex with (or at least come close to it) with our gay friends and acquaintances.

We just had our own apartments we could return to. This is just a load of people in open relationships. How fascinating and world-changing.

Any insular non-anonymous internet message board always turns into a kind of polycule situation with people not really caring who's fucked who once it crosses the boundary into meet-ups or what have you. I used to frequent one that had regular meet-ups in various regions and once a year or so have a big one with people sometimes travelling hundreds of miles to attend and I don't think anyone ended up un-fucked by the end of it.

They all need a good punch in the face, and all their smug jargon gives me a headache.

I’d rather be alone and celibate than participate in that tragi-comedy.

A ridi-cule. We’ll see how this works out for them when they’re post-menopausal and impotency prone hags and geezers. Like others have said upthread, I’ve lived through this rodeo with the swingers and their Plato’s Retreat glory days of the 1970s. The kids of these people have their reckoning. And it often turns into a very ugly scene. If they are serious, they need to do more than share randy stories with the Times.

“Children would get in the way of our erotic lifestyle!”

Their kids must love it.

"Hi Mom and Dad, and Dad, and Mommy, and Mommy, and Boyfriend...and oh Shit, just remind me who my siblings are again!"

My blatino husbear wants us to join a polycule!

Cliff Notes version: They're young swingers who feel like they've discovered something new. Most can't afford to live alone, so they're moving in together to reduce expenses.

What do I win?

Fucking get the fuck out of my face with this bullshit and making up these terms for stuff that's been around forever.

[quote]I use the word “polyamorous,” though relationship anarchist is probably a more accurate representation.

"Relationship anarchist," indeed.

This story made me roll my eyes so much I have a headache now.

[quote] Fucking get the fuck out of my face with this bullshit and making up these terms for stuff that's been around forever.

Mary, if an article from the NYTimes is going to spring such a hissy fit from you, please go take your smelling salts and retreat to your chaise longue.

There's this scene in Alien Resurrection where the Ripley/Alien is called through some psychic connection to the Alien Queen and she says "I can hear them, in the hive... it's close..." and then she is pulled down into this gross pile of goo and multiple writhing aliens and grossness

I dunno why I just thought of this, it's probably nothing

R53 - it's not the NYTimes - it's these stupid Gen Z and Millennials who claim this is a part of queer identity and trying to make themselves look special and cool.

We all see right through it. And it IS made-up terms for stuff that's been around forever.

Insufferable twats.