When three isn’t a crowd
Louis Theroux meets couples who have relationships with other people….
Louis Theroux explores the unusual ways some Americans deal with birth, love and death in his new BBC2 series Louis Theroux’s Altered States.
In the first episode, he looks at polyamory, which is not the same as polygamy. In polyamory, both partners are allowed romantic and intimate relationships with other people with the consent of everyone involved.
Open relationship
Louis goes to Portland, Oregon, to meet three couples who practice polyamory to see how it works. They include Jerry and his wife Heidi who’s also in a relationship with Joe. With the full approval of their spouses and knowledge of their children, Heidi and Joe regularly spend nights at each other’s houses. They seem happy but what about their other halves?
‘You don’t have to dig too deep to find the unhappiness in the situation,’ says Louis. ‘When you first fall for someone else after opening up your marriage you are bound to have an immediate flood of endorphins and you will be buzzing about the new relationship and the old relationship feels a bit left behind. It’s lovely for you, but not so lovely for the old partner.’
Feeling jealous
One of the main principles of polyamory is that jealousy isn’t allowed. This is difficult at first for Mattias when his partner,
AJ, who’s expecting their baby, falls for another man called Q.
But with nearly half of all marriages in the US ending in divorce, monogamy is clearly not perfect either, says Louis.
‘Marriage evolved when we didn’t really live that long,’ he explains. ‘I understand why polyamory works for some people, but I can also see that jealousy can be an issue. In a nutshell the choice you’re making is between jealousy and boredom.’