Polyamory is, seemingly, on the rise. Dating app Feeld has seen a 500% increase in searches of the terms “polyamory” in the past year, and according to research by the Kinsey Institute, one in five Americans have been in a consensually non-monogamous relationship. While non-monogamy is not necessarily the same as polyamory, this data shows a cultural shift away from traditional monogamy and an opening up about what relationships can look like.
Legal recognition of polyamory is, very slowly, improving (in some places). Right now, it’s the US that’s leading these changes. In 2020, the town of Somerville, Massachusetts officially recognised polyamorous relationships in law, changing the wording of their legislature defining a romantic relationship from “an entity formed by two persons” to “an entity formed by persons”. The following year, a throuple in California set a legal precedent by being the first case of three people being named as parents on their children’s birth certificates.
The UK, by comparison, is lagging way behind. There are currently no laws specific to polyamory in the UK (for example, to protect an employee from discrimination) and polyamorous dynamics are not legally recognised as relationships in the same way as monogamous relationships.
“The US is huge. In a place as big as that you can get little pockets of liberalism. It’s often places with a history of protecting civil rights, like San Francisco, where I lived for a number of years,” says Giulia Smith, chairperson of the UK Polyamory Association, a community group that advocates for polyamorous rights and recognition. Over Zoom, Giulia and fellow UKPA chairperson Jenny and trustee Eunice, were all keen to point out that lack of visibility for polyamorous people, combined with stigma and misunderstanding, are the root of the issue when it comes to a lack of legal recognition.
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Leanne Yau, founder of polyamory education platform Polyphilia, also believes people often assume polyamorous relationship dynamics are all about sex when in fact they often explore the same aims as monogamous relationships, like building a home and a life together. On her website, Leanne lists other misconceptions, ranging from “polyamorous people just don’t love their partner enough” to “polyamorous relationships never last”. These narratives, aside from being provenly untrue, invalidate polyamorous relationships and knock back any likelihood of poly dynamics being recognised on a legal level.
“We’re a funny little island,” adds Jenny. “Often the culture of the UK can be very resistant to change. And there are a lot of rather old-fashioned views about relationships, and families, and what constitutes a family.”
“We write every year to political parties and ask what their stance is on polyamory,” explains Eunice. “And we tend to get a generic response explaining that there isn’t enough evidence to point to discrimination. Basically it’s not an issue that politicians feel will help them get voters, so they’re not putting any energy into it.” Of course, this is a Catch-22. How can a person prove they’ve been discriminated against on the basis of something that the law doesn’t even recognise? The UK Polyamory Association is working to build up a number of case studies to counteract this, gathering examples of people who have experienced discrimination and even direct threats. Some of the examples are shocking, from people being let go from their jobs, to losing custody battles for their children, all because they are polyamorous.
As a polyamorous person in a throuple, I know that lack of legal recognition for polyamorous relationships can cause stress day to day. When my partners and I moved in together, we felt we had to lie to the landlord about our relationship (calling ourselves “a couple and our friend”) because there is absolutely nothing in law to prevent a landlord from turning us away. Likewise, one of my partners can’t come out as polyamorous at work, because there’s nothing to stop his employer from letting him go on this basis. And his fear isn’t unfounded. This has happened multiple times, with employers often citing reputational risk and even gross misconduct as the reason for ending employment.
Sarah* identifies as solo polyamorous (meaning she dates multiple people who don’t date one another) and wishes to remain anonymous due to not being open about her relationship situation with some of her colleagues and family. She experienced issues when she spent an extended period of time in hospital and her partners came to visit her. Sarah has two long term partners, one who she lives with, one who lives elsewhere. Fearing judgment from hospital staff, she didn’t disclose the nature of her relationship with her non-cohabiting partner, explaining her away as a friend. “But we definitely got some strange looks,” says Sarah. “One nurse even said to me ‘You all seem very close’ in a way that felt kind of judge-y. It made me feel uncomfortable because I knew I’d been lying, but there was this little voice in my head making me think we couldn’t just be honest… that doing that could have caused problems.”
“It’s so invalidating, and can be really upsetting, to have to take that role, to be kept secret and to feel like the ‘lesser’ person,” says Giulia. Not only does lack of recognition make life harder for polyamorous people in logistical ways, it can be a real emotional load too.
In later stages of life, lack of legal protection for polyamory can cause major roadblocks that can be insurmountable. Buying property, for example, is far more complicated. Although some lenders will grant mortgages to up to four people, these are much less common and more difficult to obtain than standard joint mortgages, which can be especially disadvantageous to lower income polyamorous people. And when it comes to raising a family, things become almost prohibitively difficult. Polyamorous partners cannot legally adopt in the UK. This is rooted in an assumption that a polyamorous home will be inherently unstable, or that social workers would need to run checks on a larger number of people if the adopting person has multiple partners. Without laws in the UK recognising multiple-parent families, polyamorous parents will experience difficulties collecting a child from school and providing financially for that child if one parent were to pass away.
“I think it’s about time the UK law caught up with polyamory in family law in particular,” says Leanne “Because even outside of polyamory, families aren’t just two parents and two kids. Families can look like all kinds of things, be all kinds of set ups.”
Jenny points out that changes would have benefits for people who aren’t polyamorous too. “There are so many examples of people who depend on their extended support network. A family isn’t constrained to a monogamous structure, and there are so many people who would benefit from a more nuanced legal stance on families, from extended family members to step parents to other kinds of carers.”
“We need to start with education,” says Leanne. It’s become increasingly obvious that ignorance about what polyamory is (and isn’t) leads to an invisible kind of discrimination.