Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships

[eastcoast_bsc]

an Jenkins, 45, faced death threats after coming out as gay while at university in Virginia. At that time, he could hardly foresee a day when he could live as an openly gay man with one partner, let alone two. But today, he shares a home in San Diego with his two partners, Alan, 43, and Jeremy, 37, (who are using their first names only for privacy), and their two children, ages three and one. All three men are the children’s legal fathers, their names on both birth certificates.

Jenkins and his first partner, Alan, both doctors, had discussed the possibility of a more open relationship for years, before meeting Jeremy in 2012. Though Jeremy, a zookeeper who works to save endangered species, wasn’t initially interested in polyamory, he got to know the couple as friends and “everyone sort of became comfortable with the idea – there was just good chemistry”, says Jenkins.

They became a family, but when they made the decision to have children, obstacles arose. Besides the fact that each man had to have his own attorney involved in both the surrogacy and egg donor contracts with their first child (separate women served as surrogate and donor), they then had to convince a judge that all three should be legally defined as the child’s parents.

This is not a new thing’: the history of non-monogamy

In 2016, a survey of nearly 9,000 single US adults showed that one in five had previously been in a consensually non-monogamous relationship. A Canadian survey came up with roughly the same numbers a year later.

“Something else we've seen in the last decade is that Google searches for the terms ‘polyamory’ and ‘open relationships’ have increased, which demonstrates that there's more interest in this topic,” says Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist and research fellow at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington, Indiana.

But people have been engaging in these types of relationships “for a really long time”, adds Lehmiller. “This is not a new thing.”

Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships

 

[Irkle Berserkle]

One more sign we're in some stage of the End Times, I guess. One more indication supernatural evil is working overtime. The descent into depravity that has occurred over the past 25 or so years is inexplicable to me on any basis other than supernatural evil. I'm becoming numb to these sorts of reports.

Cute dogs, however.

 

[dzheremi]

A cancer upon our civilizations. Its proponents will no doubt disagree, but there's nothing 'ethical' about it.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

They made the photo look so wholesome with the dogs and baby.

 

[Gnarwhal]

Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships

It's so, so gross. I think one of my neighbors might be in a situation like that. The moral decay all around us is breathtaking.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships

Monogamish, and nothing ethical about it

 

[ewq1938]