Polyamory: The Natural Way

As of recently, I've been fielding a lot of conversations dealing with the topic of polyamory. Now, seeing as I am in a lifestyle where this is more and more common, you may think that something like this wouldn't take me by surprise, however, in many cases, this has not been the case.

Around my kinky friends, sure, I can see sitting down somewhere and stepping in on a conversation about the idea of Poly, but I never expected to walk in to one sitting down for lunch one day. Now, for a little bit of background, I do know the people that I sat down with when I heard this conversation, however they are both quite vanilla, and was a little bit shocked that they really knew the meaning of polyamory. But it's not the fact that they were talking about polyamory that I'm blogging about today. It's what about polyamory that they were talking about that got me interested. I came to sit down during a discourse about polyamory actually being more natural to the animal kingdom than monogamy. (And yes, humans are animals.)

Personally, I had never thought about this before. I've been in a couple of polyamorous and/or open relationships before, and I knew that it just felt normal to me, even though I knew that the majority of society around me frowned on such relationships. I had never even taken another look in to why society tended to dislike multiple-partner relationships. As far as I really knew, what I was doing was actually wrong, even by natural standards. This, however, is not the case. Polyamory is a very natural reaction, even more-so than monogamy, by the standards of animals. The other two species of animals (Dolphins and Chimpanzees) that both have members of the species that mate for life, and have sex for pleasure, both have also been noted as often partaking in polyamorous behavior. As a matter of fact, nearly every animal, insect, bird, basically any creature that reproduces via sex, has members of its species that participates in polyamory. Now, I do not want to say in any way that monogamy is to be ruled out as as a natural response to sex and relationships, but I want to make the point that of all creatures, Humans are the only ones to seem to be overly mindful of polyamory.

Even in the bible is polyamory not only allowed, but in many cases, it is promoted. As early as Exodus 21:10, there is mention of man taking on multiple wives within his marriage. Throughout the Old Testament, there are a number of cases in which good Jews married multiple wives (remember, I say Jews because it was not until the new Testament where Judaism and Christianity diverged.), In particular, Jewish Kings. King Solomon, himself, had over 700 wives, and another 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). And once Christianity split from Judaism, with the testament, there has never been direct quote of Jesus saying that the polygamy of the Jews, only the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 7-28, where Paul differentiates his own opinion from that of God and Jesus.).

Nature and the bible both have strong statements to make for the promotion of polyamory, however, as a society, there is still a certain stigma that has been imposed on to the act of polyamory. Polyamory is more regularly seen as infidelity in the eyes of today's society, rather than the institution of having a number of different loves. From my personal experience, outside of the community, there really aren't many that sympathize with polyamory, as society tends to look at the idea of having multiple partners as being an abomination. Now that I have had personal experience with being in polyamorous relationships, I understand that I wasn't the one that was doing something wrong, I was just following natural instincts, and while yes, they are different from what has been deemed unfit by society, they are not actually feelings that are condemned by nature, nor the bible, but rather have merely been made taboo by society.