The Internet’s Influence: Making Ancient Forms of Love More Visible in Modern Times
There are many ways to have a loving relationship, which becomes clearer with the constant presence of social networks in the lives of a large part of the population. One of the most talked about in recent times involves the non-exclusivity of just one romantic partner. However, many people believe that the most commonly used terms, such as polyamory and open relationships, are the same thing. According to Antônio Cerdeira Pilão, postdoctoral fellow at USP’s Postgraduate Program in Public Health and author of a book that talks about polyamory, each term has its own particularity and, although they have recently become popular, these are old practices.
“Polyamory differs from an open relationship in that it is a word that refers not only to the possibility of being sexually involved with more than one person, but emotionally. The need to use the term polyamory is the fact that no other previous relationship model made it clear that it was believed and aimed to live more than one romantic relationship at the same time, because, in the concept of an open relationship, the possibility is usually casual, sexual and punctual, not loving and conjugal, as is the case in polyamory.”
Furthermore, the expert states that the main difference between the two words is the fact that “polygamy normally refers to marriage and that, mainly, it is not both people, men and women, who can establish more than one relationship at the same time.” Pilão also highlights that the nomenclature suffers even deeper divisions. “Normally, polygamy is subdivided into two concepts: polygeny, when it is a man who can marry more than one wife, and polyandry, when it is a woman. This combination of polygyny and polyandry is not only rare from a historical point of view, but also, normally, the term polygamy was used to refer to polygeny, which is the most common, most widespread throughout history, in the most varied societies. ”
The origin
Although it seems very recent, due to the debate on social media, the practices of polyamory and open relationships date back to more distant times. The nomenclature became widespread in 1972, when the writing couple George and Nena O’Neill released the best-seller Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples in the United States . Some references to this lifestyle gained prominence in popular culture, such as in the series That ’70s Show , which aired between 1998 and 2006 and portrayed, in a caricatured and humorous way, life in a small North American town in the 1990s. 1970. In the series, the characters Bob and Midge Pinciotti stood out for unusual practices in marriage, such as open relationships.
“From the 70s onwards, the concept began to be mobilized to refer to the opening of a couple’s relationship, maintaining the dominant structure, thought of as a loving and conjugal unit. Polyamory is a term, a word that has a history: it emerged in the early 90s, in the United States, to refer to the possibility of loving more than one person at the same time and maintaining agreed relationships between all parties”, adds Pilão .
The expert also analyzes current times and points out that the polyamory movement, still new in the history of humanity, has in fact intensified in recent years, especially with the advent of the internet to a large part of the population. “These identifications, such as non-monogamous and polyamorous, have gained current momentum that they did not have with the same emphasis in other generations. This is not to say that the debate is absurd, absolutely new, but it is gaining visibility, reach and support. The number of people experiencing consented non-exclusive relationships is arguably greater today than it was in other periods,” he concludes.