While people across the country are challenged to pay their mortgages and bills, The Chicago Tribune sees fit to print a culture story on the polyamorous crowd. What is a polyamorous person?

The story starts out with an individual by the name of Yo Yarborough, preferred pronouns, of course, they or them because the English language:

Managing all three relationships during the stay-at-home order has brought challenges since Yarborough doesn’t live with any of their partners.

I try to talk to all of them a few times a week if I can,” Yarborough said. “We (video chat) and have Zoom dates and FaceTime dates. It’s just been me and one other person.”-Yo Yarborough, The Chicago Tribune

Meanwhile, on another side of town, Tiffany, who lives with another woman, also has a male partner who is “part of the house”. The partner leaves the house to take care of work and family. Who is the family? A parent or grandparent? A wife and kids in another household? They did not elaborate on that one.

The struggle is real for the solo polyamorous, so they say. These are the individuals who may be stuck at home in quarantine while their partners are shacked up with one or more of their other partners having wild, crazy quarantine sex. Talk about FOMO.

I did have one partner who very much wanted to detail the fun crazy quarantined sex he and his partner are having,” she said, “and I was just like, ‘Come on, you gotta shut up.'”- Ashley Ray, MAshable

There are immediate partners, as one article points out and then there are the auxillary partners and the struggle is real for these people. They have to navigate difficult decisions like who to self-isolate with and who gets the boot and a Zoom call once a week. They have to make sure their relationships are equal and “non-hierarchial”.

Me, my partner and his other partner live together and have been living together for the past two years. We are quite lucky and have found a good compromise – I have a bedroom, my partner’s partner has another bedroom and our common partner can spend time with both of us separately. It’s also nice to spend time with the three of us together over dinner or watching movies. It gives us “family time”, which I think is healthy in a moment like this.”-Vice

Family time? Some people are navigating this just fine, apparently, others are seeing this quarantine as unjust and messed up, keeping them away from the multiple people that they love and have sex with. Monogamy is not enough for the polyamorous. Celibacy is enough to drive anyone crazy let alone a person with multiple partners. These people have needs that are not being met! Ask “Billy”. This from back in March before states shut down:

I live in Brooklyn, and my girlfriend and metamour live in Jersey City. Megan and I have been dating about nine months, and she and her boyfriend have been dating for about two and a half years. I was only going to spend a couple of nights here, but I’m feeling like we’re moving closer and closer to an actual shut down of New York City, and I don’t want to be stuck there if they close the bridges and tunnels. I have a car and I brought a bunch of stuff, so I am temporarily hunkering down here.-The Cut

Tough times for the polyamorous bridge and tunnel crowd, I would say. Not sure if “Billy” ever made it back to Brooklyn or if he is still taking shelter with his girlfriend and her other boyfriend.

These are the true love stories of the polyamorous in the days of pandemic. Now, I’m not beginning to understand what goes on in the mind of a polyamorous individual. It takes a certain person to be okay with this structure in a relationship. I know it’s not for me and I prefer monogamy. I knew this from back in the college days (when I thought I was a liberal) and had a jackass ex-boyfriend who wanted a polyamorous relationship. That was when I checked out. It had nothing to do with being a prude or being insecure. I just knew I wasn’t going to play second-fiddle to anyone…especially that loser!

I would argue that monogamous people have challenges, too, during these times and those challenges are far beyond the scope of juggling multiple lovers. Take individuals who plan to love one-and one alone. Their weddings are indefinitely postponed. Take ANY military spouse who has or had a significant other overseas for any amount of time. The inability for traditional couples to connect with the stress of day-to-day life during this time is very real. There are no more dinner-and-a-movie date nights parents can take advantage of to reconnect and talk without being within an earshot of the kids. And if there were restaurants that were open in their state of residence for this sort of thing, some of these monogamous adults would not have the funding for such extravagance because they lost their jobs. What about our elderly in assisted living? Some have lost a spouse. Some are lonely, isolated from visitors and scared. The liberal media does not talk much about this at all. This is not what they depict on their news feeds. Let’s not even talk about couples and intimacy with a teenager in the house! And while polyamorous people are attempting to be “non-hierachial” in the name of “relationship equality” or something like that and this, to them, is a big deal, families across the U.S. are trying to be hierachial with which bills to pay and when. So, forgive me if I do not have sympathy for a person with multiple lovers at this time. Some people have 99 problems and an extra person ain’t one.

Photo Credit: FlickR/Creative Commons/Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)/Cropped