Celebrating Polyamory Day: Committing to Managing Monogamism in Psychosexual Therapy Practice

Tuesday 23^rd November is International Polyamory Day – a day of intentionally celebrating and honouring polyamory. Dr Markie Twist, PhD tells us more.

Recently, COSRT invited me to offer a self-access Master Class dedicated to bolstering polyamory aware therapy practices through the practice of managing monogamism. In honour of Polyamory Day, I wanted to draw attention to the class and highlight a few key parts of its content, which follows in this blog.

Prevalence of Multi-Partnered Relational Systems

Contrary to what you might believe, nonmonogamy is the dominant global majority relational orientation. Indeed, over 850 societies within primarily Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East practice nonmonogamy (Crooks & Baur, 2017). Although polygny, or the practice of one man being partnered with more than one woman makes up the bulk of these global multi-partnered relational systems, polyandry, where one woman is partnered with more than one man, has been and continues to be practiced as well, particularly in societies where women wield more economic power. For example, Inuit and Aleut First Nations/aboriginal groups practiced polyandry until the 19th century when westerners and colonizers disrupted their ways of life, including their relational systems and structures (Starkweather & Hames, 2012).

In terms of monogamy, according to anthropologists, only 1 in 6 (or 16%) of the current global societies enforce monogamy as a rule (Engber, 2012). Regardless, monogamy (or rather serial monogamy) is the norm in many Westernized societies. Indeed, in 29 countries worldwide, monogamous marriages can be of differing and/or similar-gender partnerships. And although the dominant relational orientation (Davis, 2011) in the United States (US) and Canada is monogamy and mono-partnerships, the number of nonmonogamous folx identifying as polyamorous is estimated to be 4-5% in each of these countries (Fairbrother et al., 2019; Rubin et al., 2014), with an additional 100,000 people in the US identifying as polygamous (Jankowiak, 2008). Moreover, in the United Kingdom, researchers estimate that Northern Ireland houses the largest number of people in polyamorous relationships–with nearly 1/5 of the population identifying as such (Hanna, 2018).

Some scholars believe that nonmonogamy, particularly consensual nonmonogamy (CNM), is on the rise (Moors et al., 2017), which is possible. It is also possible, however, that more people are out about their minoritised relational orientations than in the past or that CNM is just being formally studied more than it has been historically (Vilkin & Sprott, 2021). Regardless, as more people of polyamorous or CNM experiences, identities, and relational systems are out about their minoritised relational orientations, reports of institutional and personal discrimination have increased and some seek support around these experiences, as well as for any number of reasons that may or may not be related to their relational orientation. Thus, psychosexual therapists need to be best prepared to work with clients of minoritized relational orientations and in ways that are culturally sensitive and aware.

Mononormativity and Monogamism

Part of becoming more polyamory-aware in practice is increasing one’s awareness of related concepts like mononormativity and monogamism, which are particularly salient to be aware of as Westerners. Mononormativity is defined as the dominant assumption of normalcy and relatedly the assumed naturalness of monogamy (Barker & Langdridge, 2010; Pieper & Bauer, 2005). Monogamism is defined as the dominant belief that the only legitimate relational orientation is being monogamous and the only acceptable relationship form is that of monogamy (Anderson, 2010), which means folx typically assume everyone is monogamous until told otherwise (Blumer et al., 2014).

Monogamism appears in a number of forms (Twist & Ansara, 2017; Ansara, 2020), which are often tied up with assumptions and phobias around the middle sexualities like biphobia and pansexualphobia. These forms of monogamism include: binarizing, misidentifying, derelationilizing, objectifying, marginalizing, pathologizing, ethnofamiliarizing (Twist & Ansara, 2017), and erasing (Blumer & VandenBosch, 2015). For an in-depth look at each of these forms, you are encouraged to check out the Master Class noted above.

Let’s take a look at just one here–erasing. Erasing involves ignoring the diversity of relational orientations, identities, experiences, and configurations that exist, often outside of monogamy (Blumer & VandenBosch, 2015). Arguably, erasing is the most prevalent of these forms in the field of systemic family therapy (Blumer & VandenBosch, 2015). Indeed, in a content analysis of the 1,563 total articles contained within one of the top-tier journals of the family therapy field within the years of 1975 to 2014, while a mere 2.24% focused on sexual and gender minorities, completely absent were any with content focused upon polyamory, polyamsexuality, polygamy, CNM, or multi partnered relationships (Blumer & VandenBosch, 2015). Having a better understanding of this form of monogamism and the other forms it takes and working towards increasing one’s awareness and management of such forms of monogamism, is a step towards increasing one’s polyamory-aware skills in clinical practice.

Managing Monogamism through Practicing Polyamory Aware Clinical Microskills

There are a number of micro-skills, or those skills that clinicians utilize to enhance effectiveness in practice (Miville et al., 2011), that psychosexual providers can bolster to assist in becoming more polyamory-aware in practice, including creating a nonmonogamist space in practice, practicing relationship cueing, determining salience, validating the impact of monogamism, and assessing and evaluating the relationship constellations that clients present within the way that they are presented (Twist & Ansara, 2017; Twist, 2021; Twist et al., 2022). For an in-depth look at each of these micro-skills, you are invited to check out the Master Class noted above. One of these micro-skills will be noted here–namely that of determining salience.

The micro skill of determining the salience of CNM takes several forms like listening to the client system and how they see the CNM–is it a part of the presenting concern? Is the CNM a part of the client’s core identity? Is CNM perceived as a problem? Is CNM thought to be a solution? Often, psychosexual therapists default to assuming that when they have CNM-identifying clients and client systems that the CNM is a part of the presenting problem or is THE presenting problem, which can be a form of pathologizing such relationships. Thus, practicing the skills of not assuming CNM is the problem or part of the problem and rather determining with the client the salience that the CNM plays in their lives and the role it is having is essential in this form of monogamism.