Polycat is Catya Belfer-Shevett. Much of the content on this site used to live on catya.org but has since been moved here.

This is my personal take and Q&A on being poly:

There are people who are monogamous, and there are people for whom monogamy is absolutely the best relationship style, and there are people who might be inclined towards having multiple partners but who can be happy being involved with one. I am not, and have never been, in any of those categories - I've been involved in multiple relationships from the get-go.

So, I never had the experience of moving from monogamy to polyamory, though my husband Dave did when we first got together in 1994. Instead I read Heinlein as a kid, and my relationships were non-monogamous from the very beginning.

In fact, a surprising number of poly people were first exposed to the idea through Heinlein's books. That is probably less true now than it used to be, with the growth of the poly community both online and off.

In my case, it was Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, still two of my favorite books. The classic Heinlein quote on polyamory, however, is not from either of those books. It's the Lazarus Long quote below, from one of Heinlein's many later books that involve him.

"The more you love, the more you can love -- and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just." - RAH

People ask me a lot of good questions about polyamory. Here are some of them, with my answers. (If you have a question I don't touch on, feel free to ask me.)

Q: Have you always had relationships like this?
A: Yes. I've been poly for as long as I have been involved with people romantically and sexually. (and yes, that's a long time, i started young)

Q: How have you done it? / What kind of poly do you do?
A: There are a number of different "styles", or "types" of polyamory (definitions). I've never been polyfidelitous, though I have chosen at times to not add partners for different reasons. I've never been in a DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell) relationship. I've never been a swinger, though that's not a judgment on swingers (or on polyfi people, for that matter). I have been in a quad, I've been in a couple of triads (where all four/three people were involved with one another), but most often I've been in Vees (where two people were involved with the same person but not involved with each other), or sets of interconnected Vees. I've been in non-hierachical situations, and from that found that I am more comfortable when there is a hierarchy, as long as the hierarchical aspects are handled with gentleness and sensitivity along with honesty and clarity. (And yes, two people can be hierachically equal, in my world.)

Q: Who are you involved with now? How?
A: In my life, Dave (my husband) and Zach (our kidlet) come first. Both of us get involved with other people. Dave is involved in a long distance relationship these days.

Q: What about jealousy?
A: Jealousy is a tricky thing. One of the ways poly people think about jealousy is to treat it as a symptom rather than as a problem, the same way that you would treat anger or sadness. What is it that is making me sad or angry or jealous? What can I do to change that?

It’s often not as straightforward as you think! If I’m angry with my friend for being late, the solution may well be the obvious - for that person not to be late. But it might also be that my friend is just a late person! If the relationship with my friend is important to me, I need to learn a way to deal with her tardiness. I might tell her how much it upsets me, but I might also mentally add a half an hour to any time she says she’s going to be there. I might make a game out of it and always tell her to be someplace an hour before I need her. I might choose to meet her at a place where I won’t mind waiting, like a bookstore or a coffee shop.

It’s not a perfect analogy, of course.

If I’m feeling jealous of the time my husband spends with his girlfriend, there are lots of choices open to me. I need to look at the situation and see what is upsetting me. For us, it’s usually about something that is going on in our own relationship that gets pointed up by his time with her. For more, check out the Jealousy links & articles.

Q: What if you catch something?
A: There's an interesting debate to be had about whether poly people (in multiple simultaneous relationships) are actually at any more risk of STDs and the like than monogamous people (in multiple sequential relationships). Regardless, yes, we pay a lot of attention to safer sex issues. Here is some writing I did on safer safer sex issues a couple of years ago that people have found useful.

Q: Do your parents know?
A: Yes. While I'm sure it's not necessarily the path that any of them would have chosen for us, they understand that this is how and who we are, and are not interested in trying to change that, and are happy for our happiness. Our other partners are welcome at family events, etc.

I came out to my parents when I was a teenager, before the term 'polyamory' was coined - it took as much if not more getting used to than my bisexuality, and I'm not sure at what point my mother admitted that it wasn't a phase. Just before we got married in 1997, she decided that marriage meant we were now going to become monogamous, but she got over it. (Which is a good thing, since my boyfriend-at-the-time was doing the flowers for the wedding!) Dave's mother has been known to give the occasional lecture on how we'd be better off if we didn't tell each other so much, but she's gotten quite good about acknowledging the place of his other partners in his life.

Q: Who else knows?
A: In my life, most everyone knows. (this is a public web page!). Someday I'll add the stories of coming out at my various workplaces. I could talk forever about being out of the closet, but instead I'll point you to some lovely writing on being out.

Q: What are the rules? / Is anything ok?
A: In general, everyone needs to be honest and open, and everyone needs to abide by the agreements they have made. Each relationship, though, has different agreements. Dave and I have both a prior consent "rule" (meaning that we need to ask the other before being sexual or getting involved with someone new), and have had veto (meaning that it's understood that we can say "no" about someone and have it stand). We also have other agreements - about safer sex, about accidental pregnancies, about other aspects of our relationship that may or may not have anything to do with being poly. (You can read our wedding vows and renewal vows, if you'd like.) I've had other rules with other partners over the years.

I also have my own set of rules, for myself, about who I get involved with. They serve as much as reminders of life lessons as hard and fast rules. Here they are.

Q: How do you manage this with a small child?
A: Personally, I didn't add any relationships from the time he was born until just before he turned two. A major relationship with Shayde and a major new relationship with Zach took up virtually all of my emotional energy. After that I got back to being more actively poly, and we are all much happier for it. It's actually much easier for us to find time with our other partners than it is for us to find time with each other - that's been one of the biggest challenges in being poly and parenting together.

Q: What does Zach think, or know, about your other partners?
A: The answer is that we're openly affectionate with our other partners around him, just as we're openly affectionate with each other, family, friends, etc. around him. He develops his own relationship with the people we're involved with. We answer whatever questions Zach has honestly, just as we would for any other family member, and we will continue to do so as he gets older.

Q: Are all our friends poly?
A: No. Lots are, but we're friends with, and related to, lots of people who are monogamous, too. I don't think that polyamory is the right choice for everyone, and I don't think that monogamy is the right choice for everyone.

Q: But why did you get married?
A: We got married for most of the same reasons everyone else seems to - we love each other, we're committed to each other, we want to raise a family together. Loving other people doesn't detract from any of that! In fact, it enhances it. (Again, you can read our wedding vows and renewal vows, if you'd like.)