Or why polyamory is so tough.

“It was the impulse to hide it immediately that got me into trouble,” correspondent Jamie wrote (to protect their Internet anonymity, I’ve changed our correspondents’ names). Many polyamorists do not publicize their relationship status.

That may have much to do with the stony disapproval we meet from Anne’s friends.

Multiple relationships require negotiation, communication, trustification, and laughter. Heavy emphasis on the laughter.

Herewith about a few comments about the work it takes to make it work.

1. How did you (all) come to polyamory?

If you have hung in through eight or ten blog posts and more than a hundred comments, you may believe I’m a polyamorist, Anne’s a polyamorist, Nancy’s a polyamorist, and we all think everyone should be polyamorist, too.

Perhaps not.

I rushed a couple of the Stevens fraternities but eventually “joined” the GDI (look it up — it’s about 11 entries down). That personality quirk may explain why I don’t think of myself as “polyamorous,” either. Polyamory is sort of an organized, secular religion except it’s not very organized. Organized hanky-panky seems too, well, rulebound for me.

I think of myself as blessed to have that same intimate, best friend who happens to be a girl. And I don’t think everyone can commit to maintaining that kind of close, multiple friendships; just that the effort is good for them.

For the record, Anne not only knows about my relationship with Nancy, she knows Nancy and she gave us her blessing… [but] she does not approve of this lifetime friendship and love.

Anne isn’t polyamorous, doesn’t want to be polyamorous, and may very well decide this poly puddle is too deep. She doesn’t see the addition of Nancy as growth for us but rather as loss for her. On the other hand, she has a dear, close friend I will call “Sally”; they bowl on Mondays, play cards on weekends, and share a motel room when they travel. Looking at the way they relate, if Sally were a man we would call them lovers. (She is extremely unlikely to start her own blog on this topic despite the great blog title — Poly-Anna.) Similar story: almost 40 years ago “Rufus” thought he should beat the snot out of me at the New Thompson Speedway (he didn’t). We survived that as well as his contention that I shot him in the butt with a pellet gun (I didn’t). He has slept in my house and shared my motel room when we travel. Looking at the way we relate, if Rufus were a girl you might call us lovers. BFFs are a lot of work.

I was never the class clown. I do wonder, sometimes, if we want to be that center of attention.

2. More from Anne
“Have I accepted this relationship?” she asked. “NO.

“Did I give my ‘blessing’?”

The answer to that is actually “Yeah, but.” I don’t believe in hiding or coverups so when it was obvious (to me) that Nancy and I had something more intense than a newsgroup acquaintance, I told Anne. I told her that Nancy and I wanted to spend time together both virtually and in the real world. We hoped that she, Anne, would see this as a relationship that would deepen our marriage and our friendship

Anne’s hope today, after all these years is, “for crying out loud, go screw her and get her out of your system.”

She did originally, without much ankle chewing on my end, say yes unequivocally. She would not say yes today because she now sees herself competing with Nancy for me. She thinks she’s losing.

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right,” famed polyamorist Henry Ford said on a whole ‘nother subject.

3. The Bible defines marriage as one man and one woman. One. Uno. What do you say to that? Isn’t all this fooling around a sin?
Actually, man ordains that. And come to think of it, Matthew reminds us that “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”

We do many things to force the people around us to act monogamous. We kill people who aren’t monogamous. We brand people who aren’t monogamous. We stone them. We burn them at the stake. We tell them they’re going to Hell. We pass “Defense of Marriage” laws to protect an institution that, if it were truly so natural, so God-like, wouldn’t need any protection at all.

“Moral integrity is the glue that holds society together. Without it, we can have no society. Polyamory is simply another form of immorality that is growing and contributes to the demise of our culture,” wrote Matt Slick for the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry.

Meanwhile, Ugandan M.P. David Bahati has introduced an anti-homosexuality bill that, if enacted, not only could sentence LGBT folk to death, it could even extradite Ugandans caught outside the country back to Uganda for punishment. Mr. Bahati offered the bill in a religious effort to fix these “emerging threats” to the traditional family.

Sound familiar?

The now-eleven-year-old Divilbiss case is a worrisome precedent, though. April Divilbiss, Shane Divilbiss, and Chris Littrell were in a polyandrous relationship that became the subject of a child custody suit. The judge denied motions to submit expert testimony and stopped the trial in the middle because he “understood the case already.”

Mr. Slick and I agree that integrity holds society together. I believe loving people to be the principled choice especially in a culture that values conflict. It is up to you to decide if polyamory is moral in your own universe. It is not up to you to decide if polyamory is immoral in anyone else’s.

4. You live thousands of miles apart. How do you stay connected?
We talk on the phone. We email. We Facebook. We cope.

It also helps that Nancy is healthy, wealthy, and wise because that synchronizes the three time zones that separate us.

We talk about everything, from software glitches to hot weasel sex. The continuing conversation defines our relationship. It defines any relationship I want to be in.

“We’re working together in the lab on something now,” Jamie said about her own friend, another researcher. “It’s not the least bit sexy, but it’s the thing we share most, the creative thing. It’s fun, the brainstorming, the knitting something together.”

I’m about the least romantic man I know. I like long walks on the beach but I don’t write love songs. I don’t buy cut flowers. I show my lady valentine cards in the store. On the other hand, I would fly from Philly to Phoenix to move a … treadmill. (Yes, I almost spelled it phly but good sense [almost] prevailed.) Our romance comes with the time we spend together; since much of that is virtual time, we talk. A lot.

Cell-to-cellphone “communication” makes the conversation we adore … difficult.

“I FOOFed this morning.”

Insert your own “poopy potty” joke here.

5. How do you feel about being Nancy’s “transition” guy?
None of us see it that way. Nancy figures her turning-point fling was the transition — she fell in love and pined when it didn’t work out — helping her through the transition from feeling unloved by TUFKAS, to feeling that spark of love again.

6. How would you each feel about going from secondary to primary or vice versa?
Poly people have their own jargon . It’s how we know a movement is more than a fad. Primary Relationships involve a high degree of commitment, such as the relationship with a spouse or other legal partner. Secondary Relationships are close, ongoing emotional friendships that may have less commitment.

Our feelings about making that kind of switch depend on whom you ask. Anne sometimes says she has become “second dog” (she hasn’t). I was a secondary when Nancy was married but became her sole relationship; and you might say I’m the secondary in Anne’s relationship with Sally. If Anne or Nancy forms another bond, this alpha dog may be back to sharing.

7. How do you feel about Nancy romancing another guy? How does Nancy feel about your staying with Anne or romancing yet another girl? How does Anne feel about Nancy romancing you?
Love is not a finite resource. Time is. Balancing expectations may be the hardest part of having more than one partner.

I do tuck in my sweetie every night and have breakfast privileges with her every morning, so it would hurt me if she spent that time with her other lover. Likewise, if she has me at her beck and call for quickie phone calls when she has the chance, she would be bereft if I let her go to voice mail while I talked with my other lover.

It’s a balancing act that Nancy and I play often. We don’t talk on the phone much when Anne is in the room. I didn’t visit Nancy’s house when TUFKAS was there. She has a regular day job and has business meetings and theater tickets. I have clients to call on, an arts council to run, and a porch to build.

I looked at the time commitment and discovered there aren’t enough hours in the day for the gym or the t00b or home maintenance projects. Even we who live with sleep deprivation hope to get seven hours each night. Add half an hour to SS&S. Commuters drive an hour and a half. We work nine. That leaves an hour and a half for meals, a couple for family time with kids and spouse, and one for reading. Your significant other ends up with an hour and a half. Maybe.

Fitting another lover into that time table will certainly have an impact.

“That acceptance you commend is sometimes grudging and not all that warm…sometimes it’s downright chilly,” correspondent Charles wrote.

“I’d have to see how I feel when that happens,” Nancy said about second question, “but as far as I can tell now, I’d be content with it.”

On the other hand, Anne does see Nancy as a competitor; she distrusts and sometimes assails, bad-mouths, curses, defames, denigrates, and disparages her. That in turn stresses our relationship and makes Anne crazy.

On the possibility of Nancy romancing Leroy Jethro Gibbs (“he has my heart forever,” she said), he and I will be OK as long as we don’t start competing for her. Anne will be OK as soon as she understands she doesn’t have to compete with Nancy for me.

“What constitutes ‘competition’,” Nancy asked me.

Monogamy.

Some people want a main partner. People of our age all grew up knowing that virtually all Americans had married by their mid-40s. Even now, only about 13% of men of that age have never been married. I suspect that we are pretty well conditioned to it and that the 87% of men who have been married may be conditioned more.

Competition doesn’t mean racing for some of that precious time. It means preventing someone else from convincing that main partner to forsake us for him or her.

8. Ownership/Neediness/Cling/Maintenance
“Some people need a lot of time alone, so that probably would be helpful for this arrangement,” correspondent Becky Sue wrote. “For a clingy, needy, jealous type like myself, I just cannot fathom the concept.”

We don’t have enough data points to generalize, but that has a ring of truth. Nancy and I and more recently Anne are occasional hermits. I have a house in the Keys where I can be alone. Anne can be alone in the house in Vermont. Nancy has a house in the Southwest where she has more alone time than Anne or I do.

While we treasure the moments we have together, we also cherish the time we have alone. I wonder if the hermit gene counteracts the cling gene?

Nancy also notes that I am “medium maintenance.” Anne might believe me to be “high maintenance.” And, no, I am indeed smart enough not to categorize either of them. To Nancy, my need for a touchstone is higher than her desire to reach out. To Anne, picking up after me — or driving me to the airport — takes more than her fervor for support.

9. How do you keep so many partners straight (so to speak)? How do you find the time?
I couldn’t juggle many more friends as close as these, but then again, I don’t multi-task well. Nancy is a girl so we expect her to do better.

In reality, multi-tasking involves switching quickly from one to the next to the next.

“I’m already juggling emails, blog posts, Facebook messages, pokes, between a host of friends,” she said. “Phone calls are another matter.”

Nancy says she is not a phone person. I am. We work well on the phone because we find every syllable we grunt at each other fascinating, and we actually like what she calls the “mind numbingly boring things” of work and home.

We do make time for the important things. And the mind numbingly boring things. But it always comes at the expense of something else.

“I may get too stressed out and make things change just to keep my sanity,” she said. “Or I may find something else in my life giving way — maybe t00b reruns, or blog posts, and FOOFery.”

10. Why on God’s green earth would you go public with this?
It has never been a secret but there are people who didn’t know. It really is simple. Anne and Nancy are two beautiful ladies. Why ever would I not want share my love for them with the world?

Stop right there! Nancy took a further look at the primary/secondary roles and competition in Who’s on First .

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Editor’s Note: gekko and I shared the four-part polylocution that lead up to these afterposts. Please visit The Poly Posts for the entire series and for other resources.]

Why is this Part I? Next time, I’ll drop the M word.

I am not Yale Marrat.

In that novel, Robert H. Rimmer turned the story of one man’s unconventional marriage to two women into a national controversy. Although my daughter has always said my life is a country song and while my controversy has not played out on the national stage, it does affect people in many states.

My name is Dick Harper and I haven’t cheated on my wife.

But I do love — and am in love with — two women and I’m shouting it from the rooftops!

[This is the final piece in our ongoing polylocution puzzle about boundless love. You really really want to read gekko’s companion piece, Going All the Way (Poly, Part 4).]

If you have hung in through eight or ten blogs and more than a hundred comments, you may have guessed there is something special between Nancy Ahern and me. She gives me great joy.

For the record, Anne not only knows about Nancy, she knows Nancy and she gave us her blessing. They have partied together. Anne stayed in the house of Murphy and Teegan when the girls attended a NASCAR race together without me. With all of that, she does not approve of this lifetime friendship and love.

For more than 30 years, Anne and I have shared the deaths of our parents and the lives of our children and grandchildren and coming great-grandchild, job gains and job losses, old house hassles, used dog stores, baking cookies and fixing furnaces, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like elephants and peanut butter. April 1 is our anniversary. No Foolin’.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “right.”

For more than 7 years, Nancy and I have shared the travails of our parents and our children, job gains and job losses, real estate conundrums, used dog stores, hermitting and hanging mirrors, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like Mets baseball and we’re both paper-trained. Today is our anniversary.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “wrong.”

The Victorian standard of serial polygamy holds that “one must fall out of love with someone old when he or she falls in love with someone new…”

I disagree. The point is not to lose your love for someone “old” but rather to expand it. Love may give us energy but it acts exactly like entropy.

Entropy measures the disorder or chaos of a system. Energy is finite but the entropy — the carrier of energy — of the Universe is always increasing.

Love can assuredly be chaotic but only those selling unhappiness would want to limit how much love we can have in our lives.

Only those selling unhappiness
would limit how much love
we can have in our lives.

By now, you may think that the people I love or the people Anne loves have somehow lessened my love for her. Nope. She and I have been friends and lovers for a big part of our “grownup” lives. That hasn’t changed.

By now, you may also think you know what is going on between Nancy and me. I won’t tell you if we are sexually intimate, because that is not your business. I will tell you we have been lovers and best friends for seven years today, because that is.

I fell for the beautiful gekko smile; I stay for the conversation.

And that, dear reader, is making love for the rest of our lives.

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[Editor’s Note: Nancy and I are concluding this public conversation about life and love. Please read Going All the Way for her own announcement.] Next week, we return to regularly scheduled political ranting; I’ll report later on some of the difficulties we have faced.

I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.
I’m pretty sure I’d do it all again.
–Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List

Or is it?

Polly Wolly Diddle All Day, gekko said.

[If you haven’t been following this ongoing polylocution about boundless love, please read the first two pieces in the series along with gekko’s companion piece, On Betrayal, On Joy (Poly, Part 3) , for her take on spit-shining.]

I like sex. I like love better. And I guarantee the sex is better with a lover than with a sexer, something I did not know at 21. A question remains to resolve this week: one can have sex without love but can one have love without sex?

Polyamory, the Movement, talks about love and open communication and responsible non-monogamy. Polyamorists the people talk about the sex.

Important Note: Condoms break. Those involved in a polyanything relationships should plan regular bloodletting for the obligatory STD tests.

“Humans are the most sexual of all the primates, willing and able to do it just about anywhere, anytime, with anyone (and even with other species if the Kinsey report is to be believed in its findings about farmhands and their animal charges),” Michael Shermer wrote in Scientific American .

Old joke: Billy Bob and Luther were talking one afternoon when Billy Bob tells Luther, “Ya know, I reckon I’m ’bout ready for a vacation. Only this year I’m gonna do it a little different.

“The last few years, I took your advice about where to go. Three years ago you said to go to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii and Earline got pregnant. Then two years ago, you told me to go to the Bahamas, and Earline got pregnant again. Last year you suggested Tahiti and darned if Earline didn’t get pregnant again.”

Luther asks Billy Bob, “So, what you gonna do this year that’s different?”

Billy Bob says, “This year I’m taking Earline with me.”

Ba da boom.

Hugh (Call me Viagra™) Hefner, going strong at 84, opened the doors to the sex party in December, 1953, with a $1,000 loan from his mother and a 50¢ cover price. Since then, sex in person, on television, in the movies, and on the Internet gets more hits than God and Mephistopheles combined (Sex: About 656,000,000 results; God: About 476,000,000 results; Mephistopheles: About 1,060,000 results. Source Google™)

This week, while no-longer-androgynous gekko talks about lifestyle, I shall search for spit and spunk to prove that “it’s not just the sex.” Positive results under an alternative light source don’t prove love and the lack of bodily fluids doesn’t prove fidelity.

Over on the other pages, Nancy “came out.” Eleven years ago, she had sex with a man who wasn’t her now-ex-husband. She made the decision to cheat as well as to hide it from him. Sex.

The long-married Fred and Gwen Strong have Friday night date nights and have for a couple of decades. Sex. Fred and his girlfriend Carol spend every other Thursday evening at the Comfort Inn. Sex. Fred spends Saturday mornings sitting side-by-side with Bonnie in the comfortable chairs in the library visiting room; sometimes they simply read but often they talk. They usually hold hands. No sex.

Does there have to be sex to be lovers?

Intercourse always starts before coitus commences. When thousands of miles separate potential lovers, they could have months or years or millions of words before they have even one kiss.

Talking too close is far more dangerous than dancing too close.

Emily and Barny Feeler have had a kind of no worries online fling for years: proximity, immediacy, and blood tests not required. It’s fun and they could probably sustain it indefinitely — after all, they live thousands of miles apart. They get to play with words, play with ideas, and even play at sex. The new age way of touching someone without ever touching. No sex.

They have also learned enough about each other to become friends.

It’s all about the sex?

Were Nancy and her turning-point fling lovers? Were Fred and Bonnie? Fred and Carol? How about Emily and Barny as lovers?

The consensus view holds that having sex with a non-spouse is cheating but not having sex with a non-spouse is not, I wrote last week. The consensus view is frequently very wrong. If the poly relationship has no groping and panting, is it still what many call infidelity? I suggest that it is and not because Jimmy Carter ran into that attack rabbit or was unfaithful when lusting in his heart.

Relationships don’t fail because of sex present or sex missing. Relationships fail because the people in them stop liking each other.

Relationships succeed because the people in them do like each other.

Nancy and her brief crush probably weren’t lovers. They had a sexual attraction but she didn’t report on the bond she now understands she wants to feel.

Library Fred and Bonnie could be lovers. They have a long-term, intimate relationship, know each other’s children’s birthdays, and would go out on a rainy night to fix a broken down car.

Motel Fred and Carol meet the test. Carol has an intimate relationship with Fred that is similar to Bonnie’s. And, of course, they have sex every other Thursday.

Online Emily and Long Distance Barny are assuredly lovers. There is no sex but they know each other’s most intimate secrets from office gossip to menstrual cycle. They share everything and would do anything for each other including fly across the country to move a … bureau.

And that, dear reader, is making love.

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[Editor’s Note: The rest of this series on Polyamory may be found here . Please also read gekko’s companion pieces, Poly Blogging , and the newly minted part 3, On Betrayal, On Joy , for her take and lots more commentary.]

“When there’s someone that should know
then just let your feelings show
and make it all for one and all for love.”

Or is it?

Chatter has increased about cheating and polyurethane. We’ll have to reach for the dictionary again.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I are continuing our conversation in four long acts. Please read Green Eyes for her take on polyurethane.]

Remember the kid with the big ears in grade school? Cribbed off your quizzes until Miss Noble boxed his ears for it. Cheaters and tattle tales defined first grade morality.

So what’s cheating? Cheating is an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, or imposture. Cheating is lying to or deceiving or tricking your unknowing partner whether for a better grade or for sex.

Without knowing anything more than we might talk about poly-something-ism, the comments in the first week of this series flowed from “I am willing to take the tests” to “burn ‘em all at the stake.” If you are married, the consensus view holds that having sex with a non-spouse is cheating but not having sex with a non-spouse is not. Remember that. “Not having sex with a non-spouse is not cheating.” We’ll see that idea again next week.

Our preoccupation with nasty, dirty, slithery sex may go only to our Victorian great-grandparents but cheating is far older than that.

The Times called Renault’s order to Nelson Piquet, Jr., to have an “accident” at the Singapore Grand Prix, the “worst single piece of cheating in the history of sport.” The crash allowed Fernando Alonso to win a race, but that was just two years ago. The first incident of actual cheating I could find occurred in the Summer Games of 388 B.C. when Eupolus, the boxer of Thessaly, bribed three opponents to take a dive. On the relationship front, Bishop Burchard of Worms’ Penitential of the year 1012 offered 194 different sexual sins including cheating with your wife’s sister and your son’s fiancee. It was a best seller. It included positions.

Fidelity (straight- or in-) is still big business today. Cheating is a major industry. Happiness apparently isn’t. Our schools, our churches, our news broadcasters don’t survive on good news; they all sell unhappiness. Or put it on the news.

gekko overlooked Fred and Gwen and Bonnie and Carol in her sampling. Fred and Gwen Strong have been married for a couple of decades. Fred and Bonnie spend every Saturday morning together at the library; Fred and Carol spend alternate Thursday evenings at the Comfort Inn when Fred is supposed to be bowling. Gwen knows about Bonnie but not about Carol. Is Fred cheating with Bonnie? How about with Carol? On another hand we have Sarah and Ralph Pother. After 25 years of monogamous marriage, Ralph announces that he is polyamorous and Sarah disagrees. He is honest and open and communicating; he wants a lover. Is Ralph cheating? Finally gekko’s own long-married, toothsome couple, Paul and Polly Dent, have several lovers between them. Paul and Polly know and approve of each other’s lovers. Are they cheating?

And does it matter whether we think they are?

Society enables illegal immigration and tax evasion and welfare fraud, and yet we do not live in an enabling world in our own personal lives. Instead we live with Prohibition.

We all know how well the Noble Experiment worked out.

Jealousy, negativism, and assuming the worst of others all go hand in hand with Prohibition. And Puritanism. And Cheating.

“The accusation [of cheating] is laced with far more ferocity than when someone talks about defaulting on a loan,” gekko wrote.

As she almost said, Instead of knitting the fabric of society, prohibition- and bigotry- and rule- and expectation-driven jealousy creates gashes of anger in our lives.

Relationships should make us happy.

We define happiness as contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, and joy. A person who believes himself happy is just that.

I like to smile. Jealousy makes us frown. Cheating makes us jealous.

Fred and Gwen Strong self-report that they are a little dissatisfied; Gwen will be more than just unhappy when she finds out about Carol because Fred is not only stepping out on her, he is doing it behind her back. That relationship does not make them happy even though she does not know he cheats.

Sarah and Ralph self-report that they were happy until Ralph “changed the rules.” Their new relationship does not make them happy because some say he cheats.

Paul and Polly Dent self-report that they are happy with each other and happy with their various lovers. No matter what our panel says, neither Paul nor Polly thinks the other cheats. Their relationships do make them happy because they are not cheating.

Probably ought not call it cheating if your partner approves. Probably ought if she doesn’t.

“I want a good wife,” Mark Twain wrote. “I’ll take a couple of them if they’re good enough.” Mr. Clemens looked for happiness.

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[Editor’s Note: The first part in this series on Polyamory may be found here . Please also read the companion pieces written by gekko, part 1 and the newly minted part 2, Green Eyes, for her take and lots more commentary.]

Next week, we get to look at the sex. And smiling. (And you wondered why I tagged these pieces as “Naughty.”)

Here’s an important distinction: open, casual sex keeps you from getting elected. Deep dark sneaky secret sex gets you on the front page of the New York Times.

Prostitutes cost Eliot Spitzer the governorship of New York, not to mention 80 large. The next NY governor, David Paterson, confessed his own infidelities right after he was sworn in. Next up? Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s soul mate was his Argentine mistress. Oh, yeah, and then there was Bill.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I again take up a conversation in four long acts much as Shaw described Major Barbara as “a discussion in three long acts.” Before you read this article, please go read Poly Pliability for our starting point.]

Polygamy comes from the Greek poly- meaning many plus -gamos which indicates a “strong smell of fox urine.” It is a marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. Probably because at least one of them smells a little off.

Polygyny also comes from the Greek poly- plus gune from which we derive woman or other female medical terms. It is the state or practice of having more than one wife or female mate at a time. Monogyny is practice of having single mate although that term, too, usually implies marriage.

Polyandry comes from the Greek poly- as well plus andr- which seems to have meant man but is also the root for automaton (android) as well as a popular phone.

“Many robots” makes more sense than “many phones” although the robots can’t really offer meaningful conversation.

You have already figured out that Polyamory comes from the Greek poly- with the amory tacked on from the Latin amor. No, it didn’t come from a National Guard Armory although battles have indeed been fought over it.

Polyamory is a made-up word for a real — and historical — cultural phenomenon. By all accounts, Thomas Jefferson had a long, continuous relationship with Sally Hemmings. And Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson and her king kept company for 20 years but didn’t they sleep together for 15 of them. They were in many ways partners in politics, in war, and in the arts. Madame de Pompadour remained at Louis XV’s side for 20 years until her death at age 43.

It is a lifestyle choice with as much dignity and commitment as traditional monogamous marriage is supposed to have, the lovely gekko writes.

Emphasis added.

I suspect most Americans would disagree. SWMBO does. According to polls, about 80% of Americans say that extramarital sexual relations are always wrong. That’s up from the early 70s (right after the “Free Love 60s”), when about 70% of people said the same thing.

Except that something between 3% and half of married men and a third of married women cheat. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to the Forest Institute. They can’t all be upset about the pound cake.

So is polyamory cheating or is it something else?

Polyamory, however, is not really merely wife swapping, gekko adds.

So Henny Youngman (“Take my wife. Please.”) was neither swinging nor polyamorous?

“I’ve been in love with the same woman for 49 years,” he said. “If my wife every finds out, she’ll kill me!”

That, in a nutshell, is the rub. Stay tuned.

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[Editor’s Note: gekko and I have again begun an ongoing conversation. Before reading this piece, please go read Poly Pliability for our starting point.]