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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to spend our last 15 minutes today with a look at a certain piece of modern dating. Nowadays anything is possible. Men can date men, women marry women, everything in between. Sorry, Ron DeSantis, I think it's a good thing, but what happens when a man is married to a woman who dates a man who's married to a woman? What does that even mean? Did you even follow that? Well, that kind of situation is what some might call a polycule. Listeners, are you in a polycule, a polyamorous relationship of any sort? Are you part of a polycule or do you call it something else? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Call or text.

Why do I bring this up today? Well, because last week The Cut, part of New York Magazine published a piece bringing us inside a polycule and it was really interesting. In it, we meet Nick and Sarah and Alex and Anna whose relationship is best explained through Google Calendar. "Sarah and Nick share a calendar. Nick and Anna share a calendar. Alex and Anna share a calendar. Sarah and Anna do not share a calendar, but are aware of who has Nick's time on any given day, same for Nick and Alex."

All of this points to the importance of time and scheduling when maintaining multiple relationships. After all, many monogamous folks already have it hard enough making time just to tend to their one relationship while juggling children, work, friendships, family, alone time, God forbid.

Listeners, if we have anybody out there who's in a polycule or any other polyamorous relationship, how do you manage your time? How do you embrace the modern approach of sharing Google calendars? Or do you have set days where you're free to have other dates? How do you go about communicating with your various partners about this and even raising the subject if you would like to consider being polyamorous? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. We'll see if we get any calls, but we're going to talk to the writer of the article now and take a deeper look at how Sarah and Nick, and Anna and Alex are tackling these issues.

It's one of the contributors to The Cut's piece. What does a Polycule actually look like? It's none other than our old friend, Anya Kamenetz, who's the author of the parenting newsletter, The Golden Hour, and author of The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives and Where We Go Now. She's an advisor to the Aspen Institute and the Climate Mental Health Network. Yes, that Anya Kamenetz who was the NPR education reporter for a long time. Anya, welcome back to the show.

Anya Kamenetz: Hey, Brian, happy to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: How'd you get interested in polycules?

Anya Kamenetz: I've been writing a lot for The Cut, and they just reached out to me because they said that I like doing interviews and I like talking to people about their choices and their modern families, so I'm one of five writers on this piece, and to collectively talk to dozens of people in all different kinds of relationships.

Brian Lehrer: Where would you like to start, whether it's through scheduling and Google Calendar or anything else about Alex and Anna, and-- I'm losing track of the names, but those four people.

Anya Kamenetz: Right. I think all those names are made up, but I think that the point here is, why are people doing these things? Why are they exploring different models for relationships? I think I can at least remember as in my parents' generation, we had free love. There was Bob and Carol, and Ted and Alice. You might have heard more about swinging in the '80s, and what's called ethical non-monogamy these days is really a byproduct, I think, of people realizing that they don't have to take their relationship model off the shelf.

They are really thinking about what works for us and what can we do, not assuming that we're having a patriarchal model of a man owns a woman and owns a woman's choices. We all know that in that model there were always double standards and you always had a lot of people doing unethical non-monogamy, and so these are people trying to do it differently.

Brian Lehrer: We've done at least one call in on the show previously for people in open marriages, but the word polycule is new to me. Is it different than just being in an open marriage? What I think I'm taking from your story of these two couples is that it's two married couples who are specifically sharing with each other.

Anya Kamenetz: Well, the polycule in the lead story, which is by Alison Davis, is about, basically you've got two couples, both of whom date other people, and then the man from one couple dates the woman from the other couple, and they're connected to each other. I think polyamory is really characterized by multiple committed and loving relationships.

I think what's new-ish or what's emerging in the world of ethical non-monogamy is people are really questioning hierarchies. They're questioning the idea that just because you are married to one person doesn't mean that they should automatically have the major claim on your time, and so can we actually take each relationship on its own terms and think about what they mean? That's something that I think a lot of couples that I talk to are really thinking hard about.

Brian Lehrer: How did jealousy come up in your reporting or that of your colleague's?

Anya Kamenetz: I think that's probably the number one question that people have about non-monogamy. What is interesting and challenging when you dip into this world is that, number one, people talk about the opposite of jealousy. There's a word that was coined in the book The Ethical Slut, which is compersion, which is actually the pleasure that you can take in seeing your partner be happy, whether they're happy with a new person, they're happy feeling attractive. That's an interesting and challenging flip of the script.

The other point about jealousy I think is that, just because you feel jealous doesn't mean that you control the other person. We know that in our culture, just because you feel angry, it doesn't justify necessarily controlling someone else's choices. Yet in our script for monogamous relationships, we think of jealousy as something that if I feel jealous, that means you are doing something wrong. For the non-monogamous people I talk about, they feel jealousy, but they use it as a starting point of a conversation. They don't necessarily say, "Because I feel jealous, you have to stop doing what you're doing."

Brian Lehrer: Alex, in Delaware County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex. It's Delaware County, New York. For those of you who don't know. Hi.

Alex: Hi. I think this conversation is really interesting. I've been polyamorous for 10 years and I really like what you were just bringing about jealousy and how it's the beginning of a conversation. I think there are a lot of emotions that we think about, like anger, that we would never say, "Oh, I'm never going to work on my anger. This is just an emotion that I'm going to feel forever." I think for us, jealousy is a way to identify other underlying needs that we have and having discussions with our partners on how to meet them.

Brian Lehrer: What's an example of an underlying need that you think jealousy points to, if you have one, Alex?

Alex: Sure. It could be that it's a fear. Let's say my partner is doing something with another partner that is special to us, like a certain activity or something like that, it's a fear that our love is going to go away. A lot of that can be worked out through discussions, through scheduling. A lot of people fear that there will be less time for them. I think that having these conversations and scheduled time together can really help people just have expectations.

Something else that I want to bring out is that, for me, I've gone through-- You were just talking about hierarchy, and I think it is a big conversation right now, whether hierarchy is good or not. I think in this culture, it's very difficult to begin non-monogamy without doing any hierarchy at all, because that's just what we grew up seeing everywhere, but for me once I realized that a metamour, so a partner's other partner can also bring to my life.

I'm from Montreal originally. I moved to New York City. I was in polyamory. I really wanted close friendships and I had a really hard time building them. Then when my partner started having other partners, I discovered that there was just a very special kind of intimacy that we were able to build because we both loved the same person romantically, and that gave us a way to build our own relationship, and I realized, "Wow-

Brian Lehrer: As opposed to be jealous of each other.

Alex: Right, exactly. Because if this person I love loves someone else-- Look, I'm not saying that you're always going to love the person that your partner is dating, but for me, I realized, "Oh, if this person I love loves this other person, there are good chances that we would get along and we have things in common." Then they became someone who added to my life. Now actually, if a partner of mine starts dating someone and that person does not want a relationship with me, it's really sad. Same with someone that I date. I want this person to want relationships. I'm definitely having an approach that is not so hierarchical anymore.

Brian Lehrer: You might have poly-polycules. Alex, thank you so much. Thank you for opening up like that. I really appreciate it. I think our listeners really appreciate it. Let's go to Mars in Crown Heights. Mars, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Mars: Hi. How's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You have a story too, huh?

Mars: Yes. I just wanted to say, the article has been pinging around all the different poly group chats and discord channels. One of the things that we were talking about was, I think obviously, most people are interested in how do you become poly by opening up in a pre-existing couple relationship?

Whereas I think for many other people who are not really represented in many stories, there are a lot of people who are solo poly, meaning, for example, I very recently became poly, was in a monogamous relationship for years. Then when I started to date again, I was like, "I think I want to do this from the position of being solo poly," meaning going out with the intention of dating multiple people, but not necessarily with an existing partner.

I think that really changes your perspective on dating, because I think, especially for young people, we've become really disillusioned with dating culture, where it's just like you date a ton of people and if they're not the one or the perfect fit, it's a situationship or it's not worth pursuing. I think coming from the perspective of solo polyamory and understanding all the beautiful differences that you can have out of different relationships with different people, and also resisting, I think, the pressure of what we call the relationship escalator, where this idea that if you don't escalate a relationship to these traditional milestones, that that relationship isn't as important as what we would understand it to be in a monogamous couple relationship.

Brian Lehrer: Anya, do you want to talk to Mars or reflect on any of that?

Anya Kamenetz: Sure. One of the people I talked to for the article was also sort of solo poly. I think that it's a very empowering reframe of the dating world, that people can really think about what are the parts of a relationship or the parts of different types of people that I want to explore and different kinds of intimacy that I want to be a part of before I necessarily find someone that I want to go deeper with and build a different kind of partnership. think it's just an example of the creativity that comes in for a lot of people who are exploring non-monogamy.

Brian Lehrer: Mars, thank you very much. Can I sneak one more in here or I don't know, this might be too deep a story for the amount of time we have, but April, if you're willing, we have 30 seconds for you.

April: Yes, I can make it quick. Thanks. My dad was a swinger in the '70s, and as a teenager, it was really confusing and damaging, to some extent, but it has left me with this open question, would I want to do polyamory? Because I saw the benefits to it. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I really don't know which road to go down. I really don't know where to invest my emotional discovery in this. That's the shortest I can make it.

Brian Lehrer: April, thank you very much. Anya, in your last 30 seconds, I don't know if you have any advice for April or if you want to just point people to the article set on The Cut and say what you hope they'll get out of it.

Anya Kamenetz: Yes, I hope that people will read, explore, and reflect no matter what your relationship style or status is. The question of what to tell the kids or if to tell the kids or the impact on the kids is one article within it. I think that's important, because if we really are talking about not just dating, but the future of families. Yes, I hope people will check it out and let us know what they think.

Brian Lehrer: Anya Kamenetz wrote one of those articles in The Cut from New York Magazine. She's author of the parenting newsletter, The Golden Hour, and the book, The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives and Where We Go from Now, and an advisor to the Aspen Institute and the Climate Mental Health Network. Anya, thank you so much.

Anya Kamenetz: Thank you.

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