 polyamorous polyamorous polyamorous polyamorous polyamory if he tries to con you into some polyamorous millennial bull yeah so more likely than not you've at least heard of polyamory maybe you have friends that are poly maybe you're open to it or maybe you're already in a poly relationship but how does one even start exploring polyamorous relationships like how do you even meet people because let's be honest that's probably not a dating question you can ask your mom there tends to be a period of time where if you're new to a non-monogamy community in a place you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting dates because you don't have anyone to bet you yet and so getting involved in community socially making friends and connections opens more doors for people for you to date or to connect with in other ways I used to kind of like jokingly call my friend group the slut referral network we had just started hooking up with someone we thought they were super hot a lot of fun to play with we would start recommending them to all our friends so poly relationships come in all different forms or polycules could you give me an example of what that looks like for instance right now my polycule would be I have a sweetie who lives over in Philly where I just moved from my housemate who I live with is a sometimes lover of mine I've got a long distance partner in Jacksonville how do you manage like your time with all your partners or sweeties Google Calendar is basically the like deity of polyamory communities I don't think that it is all that different from how monogamous folks juggle time with friends time at work time with their partner time with family what about jealousy I think that a lot of people have this idea that in order to be good at non monogamy you have to like never feel jealous of anything at all jealousy is a normal human emotion how we manage it is just talking a lot and just to be clear none of this is new we may only be able to trace the term polyamory back to 1990 but the roots of such relationships date much further extramarital relationships between men in ancient Greece the Hebrew Bible talks about men with multiple wives there's courtly love in the Middle Ages on down to free love in the 1970s and nowadays one out of every nine Americans has been in a polyamorous relationship and one out of every six Americans wants to try polyamory even though that might not be what society would lead you to think people often think of monogamy as the default what's your take on why that is the short answer to that is white supremacy and colonialism did I lie nope no lie found because historically as European powers colonize many parts of the world they impose the idea that monogamy was superior and that has stuck around until today and just in terms of cultural exposure most people didn't grow up knowing anybody who wasn't monogamous or who at least admitted to not being monogamous what other challenges do poly people face there is definitely a layer of figuring out how to deal with being marginalized especially for folks who are cisgender relatively straight assumed who are white folks who are entering into a position where they have an identity that gets them flack for just being who they are okay so dr lis beyond polyamory or even romantic relationships more broadly give us your expert opinion how do you relationship one of the things that I try to keep in mind is that for the most part the people in my life are not trying to hurt me on purpose and so finding a way to understand the things that they are doing from a kind story rather than an unkind one can give you so much more space to come through conflict together and find ways out of it