Are Poly Elders Good at Polyamory, or is Polyamory Good for Elders? Compersion While Aging in Open Relationships
by Kathy Labriola, author of Polyamorous Elders: Aging in Open Relationships
I am a counselor, nurse, and hypnotherapist, and I've been in private practice in Berkeley, California for 35 years. My mission is to provide affordable mental health services to people in alternative subcultures who cannot afford psychotherapy. I accidentally stumbled into writing books about polyamory.
It started innocently enough in the 1990’s, when I wrote a lot of zines and pamphlets on open relationships because there was very little written about this type of relationship at the time, and my clients were always asking me, "Isn't there a book I could read about how to do this?" Eventually, a publisher saw my little pamphlets, and asked me to write a "how to" book on polyamory.
By that time, "The Ethical Slut" had been written so there was at least one book out there. However, "The Ethical Slut" was too advanced for most of my clients who were very new to consensually non-monogamous (or CNM) relationships. I considered that book to be "Poly 2.0" and my clients really needed "Poly 101." I have ended up writing four books: Love in Abundance, The Jealousy Workbook, The Polyamory Break-up Book, and Polyamorous Elders: Aging in Open Relationships.
I am not really a writer; I just write books when I am pissed off that I can't find a book that addresses a CNM-related topic I want to read about.
For my most recent book, Polyamorous Elders: Aging in Open Relationships, I interviewed lots of self-described poly geezers, fifty-five and older, about both the joys and challenges of multiple relationships and aging. They described the complexities of juggling multiple relationships, as well as managing all the usual issues of aging, such as: managing medical conditions and disabilities (their own and/or their partners’); assuming caregiving responsibilities for aging relatives; grieving the deaths of parents, siblings, and partners; retiring from careers and starting new lives; navigating finances in old age, and potentially moving into some form of senior living.
Whether you are an elder yourself or are a younger poly person, I feel it is important for all of us to have role models of successful CNM relationships. When I was a young woman in my 20’s trying to manage multiple relationships with no guidance of any kind, I never knew any older poly folks. There were no visible role models of long-term poly relationships lasting a lifetime, and I wondered if that was even possible. I always wondered, what happens to us poly folks when we get older? Without any examples, it’s harder to visualize or believe in something. At the time, a long-term girlfriend said to me in frustration, "You're just making this shit up as you go along!" and to some extent she was right! In this book, I wanted to show the diversity and vibrancy of many poly elders, so younger people could see that it’s possible to have lifelong, healthy and happy poly relationships.
Are poly elders good at polyamory or is polyamory good for elders?
One of the questions I was trying to answer was, “Are poly elders good at polyamory or is polyamory good for elders?” It had been clear to me for a while that lots of poly elders seemed quite happy with their lives, and that they were managing their relationships well without much drama or jealousy. So it was kind of a "chicken or egg" situation.
As it turns out, both are true!
Elders are good at polyamory because by the time they become senior citizens, they have had decades to practice polyamory and develop a very strong poly skill set and work out satisfying relationships. And there are some specific advantages and benefits to polyamory that make it a good fit for elders.
Most older poly folks have long managed to tame “the green-eyed monster” of jealousy, and most report experiencing little or no jealousy and much more lived experience of compersion as they age. Most poly geezers have been with their partners for decades: the longevity, stability, and security of their relationships have made them feel safe and loved. One self-described "poly veteran" explained, "If she was going to leave me for any other partner, she would have done it by now. After 40 years, I feel pretty certain she's not going anywhere." Another said, “My partner has been with his lover for 25 years, and she is certainly a known quantity. She has always been respectful of our relationship, and that made me feel loving and generous towards her.” One man told me, "It used to make me insanely jealous when my wife came back from her lover looking so radiant and happy! Eventually, I had to admit that she was more fully present and alive in OUR relationship because of her relationship with him. So I came to see that there was something in this poly thing for me!"
Another simply said, “None of us old folks have the energy for ‘poly drama’ any more, so we have let go of jealousy. Once you get beyond that, you can accept the other partners as part of the normal fabric of your life.”
Many people said they have discovered unexpected advantages of polyamory as they age, including increased compersion as they see how having metamours benefits them. Many said that they were first drawn to polyamory to have more love, sex, intimacy, and adventure in their lives. But in their elder years, they cited having multiple partners and metamours as a very resilient model of aging. The simple explanation is that more people are likely to have more resources, including multiple incomes, more people to share the work and tasks of daily life which may become more challenging with aging, and more partners and metamours can mean more sources of companionship and emotional support. Many said their partners and metamours had really come through for them in every crisis they encountered in aging, especially in providing care and help with caring for partners and metamours with health conditions.
A trend that surprised me is that some monogamously-oriented older women have established long-term committed relationships with poly married men and have been pleasantly surprised to find polyamory pretty satisfying. They told me that when they were younger, they could only be happy in a monogamous relationship, but that the reasons they previously needed monogamy no longer exist. They had wanted a monogamous man to be a full-time co-parent and share both the work and the financial burden of raising children, but their kids have long since left home. And some said that a full-time relationship would get in the way of fulfilling long-deferred goals and dreams, such as starting a business or completing their college education. Others said they get so much companionship and emotional intimacy through spending time with their adult children and grandchildren, that they don’t need or want very much from a man, and that having a full-time mate would interfere with their time with their families.
The dominant model for poly elders is a primary couple cohabiting and having other significant outside relationships, whether these couples are LGBTQ or heterosexual. Poly elders are much more likely to be in a hierarchical form of polyamory, as part of a married or cohabiting couple that is considered their primary relationship, or which may be a co-primary relationship as they may have another lover that is also a long-term committed partnership. In most of these cohabiting couples, each person in the couple has one or more committed long-term outside relationships with other lovers who don’t live with them.
This practice of living in couples appears to increase compersion for poly elders. It seems to be a lot easier to experience positive and supportive feelings about a nesting partner's other partners if you do not have to share living space with them and negotiate all the issues of living together, sharing finances, etc. Many poly elders told me that it had been hard enough to find one person they could happily cohabit with for a lifetime, much less two or three people that they would be compatible to live with. One man said, "I like my metamour and enjoy it when my husband has his boyfriend over for dinner, or for the weekend, and spending holidays with us, but living with him full-time just would never work for any of us!"
Others have succeeded with the more challenging and complex model of living in triads. Some of these poly elders have experienced a different kind of compersion than I have seen described or identified anywhere else. The majority of successful poly triads are MFM, where a woman is the "hinge" who has two male spouses. Because women statistically live longer than men, as these triads age, it is fairly likely that at least one of the men will die first. In these triads, some of the men have expressed that they feel compersion because they know that their partner will still have the metamour. One man told me, "I feel comforted knowing that if I die first, my wife won't be alone, because she will still have a partner living with her." A smaller number of long-term triads of poly elders are FMFs which include two bisexual women and a straight man. In those triads, it is likely that the man will die first and the two women may have many more years together.
In each of these triads, compersion is described as something that continues even beyond death, feeling gratitude towards the other partner because their spouse will still have love and support.
My research and interviews with older people in non-monogamous relationships have been very encouraging! Compersion seems to increase over time, because as poly geezers gain more experience in managing multiple relationships, they naturally become more accepting and loving towards long-term metamours. And compersion appears to naturally be enhanced as the issues of aging reveal the additional benefits of having more people in the polycule to provide all kinds of crucial support during old age.
About the Author:
Kathy Labriola is a nurse, counselor, and hypnotherapist in private practice in Berkeley, California, providing affordable mental health services to alternative communities including the poly, kink, LGBTQ communities and political activists. Kathy is author of three books, Love in Abundance, and The Jealousy Workbook, published by Greenery Press, and “The Polyamory Break-up Book” published by Thorntree Press. She has been a card-carrying bisexual and polyamorist for nearly 50 years. She is political activist and community organizer. She is extra crunchy, lives in a housing cooperative, rides a bike, and raises chickens and organic vegetables.
Email address: anarchofeminist@yahoo.com
Website: www.kathylabriola.com
