Bi women ‘use monogamy and polyamory as relationship strategies’
January 18th, 2010
A recent study from a Canadian university has discovered that bisexual women change their sexual identities over time, rather than defining themselves rigidly as monogamous or polyamorous.
The dissertation, by the University of Toronto’s Margaret Robinson, looked at the sexual identities of 40 bisexual women and whether they chose monogamous relationships or not. Dr Robinson says that many members of the bisexual community saw it as divided into two camps: those with single partners and those with many. However, her work revealed that distinctions between the two blur, “as women transition from one relationship structure to another. What we have is not two warring factions, but two relationship strategies which meet particular needs at different points in a woman’s life.”
The study shows that nearly a quarter of women who now said they were monogamous had previously identified as polyamorous, while over 10% of all the participants had changed from identifying as monogamous to polyamorous or vice versa more than once.
Dr Robinson believes that her work shows that while behaviour and identity are connected phenomenon, they do not correspond exactly: “Our preferences can lead us to adopt particular identity labels, but these labels do not predict our behaviour,” she states.
The dissertation also illustrates the flexibility of definitions: at the time of interview, most of the women who identified as polyamorous women were not in relationships with multiple partners, while several of the monogamous women who participated in threesomes did not feel that this compromised their sense of monogamy.
Commentators, such as Amy Andre, co-author of Bisexual Health, have welcomed the research for the contribution it makes to the understanding of bisexual women’s lives and behaviour.
I’ve been blessed to have known a lot of poly people of various sexes, gender identities and orientations, and it seems to me that the above research applies to pretty much all of them. Not only that, but there are very different ways of *being* poly, resulting in very different family set-ups over time. At first glance, it appears that this research just assumes that the way in which poly and monogamous people “do” their poly and monogamous relationships are sort of monolithic, which I hope is wrong, as it would miss out huge and significant differences.
I say I’m blessed because my long-term monogamous relationship has benefitted enormously from having poly friends to challenge our assumptions and really get us to communicate clearly and work together. Having a diverse group of friends to provide you with horizon-broadening perspectives enhances your emotional health - who’d have thunk it?!
K ∼ January 19th, 2010 5:45 pm