Heinlein

One author who was seminal to my understanding of sexual relationships was Robert Heinlein. I got my copy of Stranger in a Strange Land from a friend who didn't want it anymore, and it became somewhat of a revelation- I read it very quickly, and absorbed the social/political ideas within it like a sponge.

By that point, I was in college, and have met some very liberated people. I heard about polyamory, bondage, fetishes, and role playing from these new friends, and started to explore.

Nothing explains the idea of many-partnered love quite like the scenes from Stranger in a Strange Land, and also Job- the only other Heinlein novel I have read so far. To me, the central meaning of a polyamorous lifestyle is that you don't have to abandon one love for the sake of another- if your heart is big enough to accommodate many different feelings for many different people, you don't have to say goodbye to one lover before connecting with another one. The character Alex from Job figures this out in a scene in which he makes love to a girl he meets while looking for his lost girlfriend, Marga.

Although the communal living scenes from Stranger have a 60's cultish-like feel which reads a bit naive today, that does not diminish their underlying idea- that love has many shapes, and we don't have to be so narrow as to focus on one person and twist ourselves into a rigid knot, trying to stay "faithful" to them. Faithfulness comes in many forms, and it does not have to include a promise to not be with anyone else.

To me, faithfulness lies in constant, dependable support of another person. I may or may not have other sex partners or lovers, but if I am there for for someone when they're sad or broke, if they can call me at 3am just to talk, if I know that when I get sick, my lover will take care of me, well, to me, that is faithfulness. And if my partner is big enough to be supportive in this way with other people besides me, well, that doesn't make me jealous- it tells me I have met a saint :-)

Being there for one another is faithfulness. Constantly bickering and undermining each other while not fucking anyone else- that's not faithfulness. That's a lifetime wasted- and I don't need that kind of virtue.