For polyamorous people, there is no romance without finance

The Boston Globe

When people find out that Scott Legault and Petra Jackl, who are married, also live with Legault’s girlfriend, the three’s questions tend to focus on the bedroom.

But just as important to the Warwick, RI trio as they embarked on the new living arrangement in 2019 was a much more banal reality, faced by lovers of all stripes: money.

There was a mortgage to refinance to include the names of all three. There was Legault’s pension and annuity, to which his girlfriend had to be added as beneficiary. There was a division of household expenses in relation to each of his income.

“I’m quite open at work when it comes to telling people that I have two partners, and the boys, being boys, say: Ohbut I try to say, ‘It’s not really like that,’” Legault, 58, said. “But the cool thing about it, and the guys get it right away, is when you say, ‘Three incomes.’”

Jackl, Legault and his girlfriend (who did not want to be identified in this story for privacy reasons) identify as a “vee,” in which one person (Scott) acts as a “hinge” in a relationship with two other people. They are not dating independently. But polyamory, an umbrella term that describes people who seek more than one romantic connection at a time, comes in many other forms.

There are triads, in which three people date each other individually and in groups. There are hierarchical structures, made up of primary and secondary partners; and non-hierarchical polyamory, in which all relationships are on equal terms. There are “nesting mates” (who live together) and “kites” (mates who rarely see each other).

Just as each setup, often called a “polycule,” is custom-made, these relationships also require customized financial considerations.

Who pays for the appointments? Will the partners combine media? And, when the money is already among the most difficult things for couples to discussWhat is a conversation about it like outside of the framework of a duo?

Glossary of polyamory terms

Polyamory:

A subset of ethical non-monogamy where it is assumed that all partners can pursue multiple romantic relationships. From the Greek “poly”, which means many, and from the Latin “amor”, which means love.

Ethical non-monogamy:

Any relationship structure in which all partners are aware of and consent to some form of non-monogamy, whether sexual, emotional, or both. Also known as “consensual non-monogamy.”

Polycule:

A web of interconnected relationships; It can be used to refer to the network itself, or to a graph that illustrates it. A portmanteau of “poly” and “molecule,” because of how the configurations can resemble chemical structures.

Triad:

A relationship of three people, all of whom are romantically involved with each other. A triad contains three dyads (A and B; A and C; and B and C), as well as the triad relationship (A and B and C). Also known as “triple”.

Yard:

A four-person relationship network where all parties are romantically interconnected.

Solo polyamory:

A form of polyamory in which an individual chooses to be his or her own “main partner,” establishing connections without the assumption of moving up the “relationship escalator” with one or more others. Solo polyamory often includes the assumption of living separately from the entire partner.

Metamour:

The couple’s partner; from the root “meta”, beyond.

Non-hierarchical relationships:

Polyamory that strives for equality of autonomy and position between all relationship configurations rather than prioritizing one over another. These are not immune to the “inherent hierarchy,” resulting from factors such as shared responsibilities with a partner with whom one shares children or a home.

Hierarchical relationships:

Relationships in which certain associations have priority over others and/or are given additional rule-setting powers. Often, but not always, these are the early result of people discovering polyamory when they already have a partner. Partners in hierarchical relationships are often called “senior partners” or “secondary partners.”

Nesting partner:

Partner with whom you share a home.

While the prevalence of polyamory is murky… A 2016 study estimated that more than one in five American adults had practiced consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives. Somerville, cambridgeand Arlington They have become bastions of the community. In the last three years, all three municipalities have begun allowing domestic partnerships between more than two people (Somerville is believed to have been the first in the country to do so, in 2020). Somerville It has also passed ordinances prohibiting discrimination. against polyamorous people.

The Globe spoke with more than a dozen New Englanders who identify as polyamorous to talk about how their matters of the heart intersect with matters of the wallet.

The cost of appointments.

Single people spend $117 billion a year on dating, according to a Match Survey 2022. And for polyamorous people, tending to the many tendrils of their love life can come with a particularly hefty bill.

Haley Slavick, a 27-year-old nanny, began dating her boyfriend in August 2022. When that relationship began, she “definitely started overspending” on dates, she recalled, a habit that negatively affected her relationship with her wife. , who he has been with for nine years.

Slavick began allocating funds in her personal checking account specifically for expenses related to her relationship with her boyfriend. She also has monthly meetings with each of them individually, and money is one of the topics they discuss.

Sparrow Alden, a 59-year-old teacher who lives in New Hampshire, came up with a more improvised budgeting method. She and her wife of 33 years put all their income into shared bank accounts. From there she receives a monthly personal allowance of about $100. A portion of that amount goes into a physical envelope, which she has used to pay for dates with out-of-state boyfriends, who put an equal amount in the envelope.

“It was just complete transparency,” he said.

For long-distance polyamorous relationships, travel can be the most important item. Marissa Barlow, a 36-year-old Somerville resident, identifies as “poly solo,” meaning she lives alone and has no plans to mix her finances with partners. She has two local partners and another more serious partner who lives in Seattle.

With their local partners, he said, they often split the cost of a tapas or sushi date evenly. With her Seattle partner, there’s more math involved: They each pay for their own flights when they visit each other about once a month, and they split lodging costs when she flies to him, since he lives with a different partner. .

“This is a very expensive relationship,” he said, laughing.

Since dating can be “a lifelong process for polyamorous people,” financial sustainability is key, said Matthew Burdick, a Warwick, RI, resident who shares a girlfriend with his wife, Melanie Carrazzo, and has several others. relations.

“Love is infinite, but…” Burdick said, starting a well-worn saying within the polyamorous community.

“Time and finances don’t,” Carrazzo concluded. “You just have to decide what your priorities are.”

Does polyamory save money?

When it comes to long-term expenses, many polyamorous people said that shaping their relationships eased a variety of cost-of-living burdens.

“The meme is that… the only way to pay rent these days is to be polyamorous,” said Willie Burnley Jr., a polyamorous person and Somerville City Councilor at Large who sponsored the new city ordinances.

Ask Kaden McPherson. This April, the rent on the three-bedroom Fall River apartment she shares with her husband will increase from $1,200 to $1,800 a month, a stretch for the couple, who already live “paycheck to paycheck,” said McPherson, who works at the apartment. of bank fraud.

So the couple is in talks with their other the other half, another married couple, currently living in Maine, talks about the four of them buying property and moving together somewhere less expensive, like Rhode Island.

“My mother told me, ‘Sometimes I can barely handle your dad, how do you handle three people?’” McPherson, 30, said. “I said, ‘It gets kind of interesting, but from a financial standpoint, it works. It turned out very, very well.’”

Other savings may arise simply from the reorganization of housework. Hinsdale, NH resident Heather Reid-Barratt, 38, is part of a “tria”: Reid-Barratt has a spouse and they share another couple, who is preparing to move in with them and her 11-year-old child. .

When that happens, they plan to split the roughly $6,000 in monthly expenses three ways, and there’s also the bonus of built-in child care.

“It’s a big relief to have to pay for someone to come,” Reid-Barratt said.

The financial relief, Reid-Barratt added, “is a benefit I didn’t expect.”

Communicate with multiple partners

“The way our culture treats having different attitudes about money as something moral or virtuous is as true of polyamory as it is of monogamy,” said Laura Boyle, a Connecticut-based relationship coach who wrote an economical guide to polyamory. “Having to figure that out with three or more people gets really complicated and really fast.”

Adding more partners to the mix makes it even more crucial to have cards-on-the-table conversations about money, Barlow said.

When Barlow and his Seattle partner started dating in 2022, they had to have a “big conversation” about money when they started investing in their long-distance relationship, he said, especially since he has a partner to consider.

“If you’re planning a vacation, there are people who don’t go on vacation who have relevant input,” he said.

One of Barlow’s local partners, East Boston resident Fritz McGirr, was in a monogamous marriage until the summer of 2021, when they separated and he decided to try polyamory. His ex-wife earned much more than him, he said, which over time had caused resentment. Now, he said, with new partners, all issues are on the table.

“I think the openness of polyamory lends itself to just being open to conversation,” he said.

After all, money is just one of the many daunting topics (from jealousy to sexually transmitted infections) that having multiple partners forces to the forefront.

“It’s still a difficult conversation,” said Warwick resident Melanie Carrazzo, “but part of polyamory is facing the difficult conversations and actually having them.”