‘Polyamory is misconstrued as sex-fest,’ says Maya Oppenheim at How The Light Gets In festival

The Independent

Maya Oppenheim argues monogamy shouldn’t hold ‘moral high ground’ over polyamory in a debate organised by The Institute of Art and Ideas.

Transcript

00:00 I don't think that monogamy should have the moral high ground.

00:03 I think we need to move away from a kind of dichotomy

00:06 that you've got monogamy on one side and polyamory on the other side

00:10 and that one is inherently more moral than the other.

00:14 When I look at a relationship, I'm far more interested

00:17 in whether that relationship has honest, open lines of communication.

00:21 Is there love? Is there security?

00:24 And I just feel like that tells you a lot more

00:27 about whether a relationship has the moral high ground

00:29 than the structure in which those people decide to have their relationships.

00:34 Often monogamy doesn't work.

00:36 Half of marriages end in divorce.

00:37 A lot of people cheat and also a lot of people end up staying

00:41 in very unhappy relationships for far longer than they should.

00:45 Domestic abuse too is so prevalent and I feel like that is linked

00:49 between two and three women are murdered every single week in the UK

00:53 by a current or former partner.

00:56 And I also just feel like with polyamory, there's such a fear of it.

01:00 You know, it invokes such, such strong visceral reactions from people.

01:04 Like when it comes up in conversations, people kind of,

01:07 it's almost like you've said to them, "Oh, I want to open up our relationship

01:11 and turn it into an open relationship."

01:13 They just feel like, you know, revolted by it.

01:16 So I feel like we need to look at that and why are people

01:19 so instinctively hostile towards polyamory?

01:24 And I'd say that's probably because of jealousy and maybe they've got

01:27 a real deep attachment to the family that they don't realize that they have

01:32 and they feel very, very threatened by polyamory.

01:34 It's such a deeply personal choice how you choose to, you know,

01:39 spend your love life, how you choose to organize your sexual relationship.

01:43 And it really, really needs to be down to the individual

01:46 to choose what they want to do.

01:47 I think I'd be much more interested in the fact that, you know,

01:50 society does really look down on polyamorous relationships.

01:55 You know, with the rise of the far right, we're seeing more and more and more

01:59 this kind of heralding and hailing of the nuclear heteronormative family.

02:04 We're seeing anti-abortion ideologues in America, like really emboldened.

02:10 Millions of women lost their legal right to have an abortion last year.

02:15 But we've got trad wife movement too.

02:18 That's, you know, the movement of women staying home to look after the kids

02:21 and do all the cooking and the cleaning.

02:23 I just feel like that actually we're seeing a regression.

02:26 We're seeing retrograde views and a real kind of clamp down

02:30 on people wanting to have, you know, polyamorous relationships

02:33 or do things differently.

02:35 Also, I did read a study that found that kids that have grown up

02:38 in polyamorous families are just as healthy,

02:42 if not more healthy than kids.

02:44 So I think this idea that, you know, I think also it's a misinterpretation

02:49 of polyamory to think, oh, these relationships mean, you know,

02:52 like multiple people are coming in at the weekend, every weekend.

02:55 Like there's just loads of misconceptions of polyamory

02:58 that see it as a sex fest or think that polyamorous people

03:02 don't get jealous.

03:03 Of course they get jealous, but maybe they have a more healthy way

03:06 of expressing it.

03:07 For the record, you know, I've never been in a polyamorous relationship.

03:10 I think for me, the idea of, you know, going from one partner

03:13 three days a week to another partner four days a week,

03:16 something like that, it does sound quite stressful

03:18 and not the type, and like a lot of bureaucracy and admin.

03:22 That's not how all polyamorous people live their lives.

03:25 Like there's this joke that I read earlier.

03:28 It says something like polyamory didn't exist until Google Calendar,

03:32 which I thought was quite funny.

03:33 But like, you've got people, poly can take all different forms

03:37 and you can be in a poly relationship and have long enduring commitment.

03:41 You could have a relationship that lasts decades

03:44 and you could argue that you get a lot deeper with them.

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