Event: Non-Monogamous Relationships Workshop
Date: 10/6/14
Sponsor: Dr. Meg John Barker, Dr. Markie L.C. Blumer and Dr. Alex Iantaffi
Throughout today’s cultures, there are many definitions of love and friendship. There are monogamous, non-monogamous, friendship, and family love just to name a few. How do we search through these different label’s within our current society? This is part of what was touched upon in the Non-monagamous Relationships Workshop. Leading this event were Dr. Meg John Barker, Dr. Alex Iantaffi, and Dr. Markie L.C. Blumer. In the second portion of the workshop, Dr. Iantaffi lead the discussion on, “Working therapeutically with openly non-monogamous relationships and family systems.”
Before even entering the room, everyone was able to choose a nametag with the preferred pronouns you want to be referred to as. Within the discussion, many ideas around polyamory were discussed. They defined this term as, “At its most basic, the concept of polyamory stands for the assumption that is is possible, valid and worthwhile to maintain intimate, sexual, and/or loving relationships with more than one person.” While talking about this, Dr. Iantaffi touched upon what is socially acceptable in the American society today. An example given was if you would search Google images on couples you would find young, white people, a man with a woman, in very idealistic settings like the beach. If you would search on family, it would be very similar only with the couple being slightly older with grade school age children because that is the perfect age. Why is this culturally acceptable? Why isn’t polyamory culturally acceptable? In other countries and even religions, polyamory is the social normalcy.
One of the most important ideas that I was left with after this workshop was to keep an open mind. There are so many different standards throughout the world and even throughout history. What we find normal here may not be the case overseas. Why should we judge someone else’s normal? This was a great workshop to help open one’s eyes and begin understanding other people.