toe socks at the orgy

polyamory is cringe. sorry.

Somewhere in East London, on a winter’s night, there is a ‘cosy’ (cramped) loft space where 20+ strangers have gathered for a ‘sensual feast’. I am amongst said strangers, sitting cross-legged and shoeless on the floor, patiently awaiting my turn in the sharing circle. It’s like a corporate induction day – but instead of sharing names and fun facts, we’ve been asked to introduce ourselves followed by ‘something that might prevent you from fully engaging with the experience.’

Most open up about their insecurities, points of vulnerability, or points of tension and stress in their lives. I confess to being just a little bit hungover.

I know that this is important information, given that we’re about to get quite naked and covered in food. I know I should be practising the ‘active listening’ skills I’ve seen countless Instagram infographics on (is my algorithm trying to tell me something?), but I’m struggling to take in what my fellow dinner-guests are saying. My attention wanders, instead, to the feet of the woman sitting beside me.

Toe socks. At the orgy. Really?

We knew, from the details on the invite, that the event would be shoeless. I’d made a point of wearing a pair of red knee-high socks. Tasteful, playful, a little bit sexy. The woman to the right of me clearly had other ideas. With horror, I could make out all five of her toes, contoured in cotton.

As I scanned the room I noticed that she was not alone. At least three others had made the same sartorial choice. That’s 20% of the room donned in toe socks – an alarmingly high proportion.

I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying over all the toe socks. Was something going to happen later that would require better pedial grip? Would we need to – somehow – use our feet dextrously, without removing our socks? Why would you wear toe socks to the orgy? Had they no shame?

Freedom of expression, autonomy, radical candour, vulnerability – these are all core principles that underpin the practice of ethical non-monogamy (ENM). They are principles I embrace within my own ENM relationship. Conceptually, I believe that these unconventional relationship structures are, actually, pretty cool.

I get to have my cake (a loving relationship) and eat it (date and sleep with other people).

But there is a defensiveness within the ENM community that results in over-explaining (often with a slew of complex terms and jargon) and over-moralising what is essentially just another way to explore and express love.

Despite the deeply unholy things many of us get up to, there pervades a ‘holier than thou’ mentality within polyamorous circles. We nobly acknowledge that we cannot ‘own’ our partners; we are wisened enough to understand that one person cannot fulfill all of our needs; we are evolved enough to overcome feelings of jealousy and possessiveness in the pursuit of free love. We know that love is not a finite resource and the ‘scarcity mindset’ we take on in relationships is merely a symptom of late-stage capitalism. Blah blah blah.

Ergo we are better than you – the monogamous couples who will never know the delights of group sex or ‘compersion’. We mistakenly frame ethical non-monogamy as better than monogamy – often using half-baked evolutionary theories to validate our relationship choice as the more ‘natural’ option.

But we’re not emperor penguins or gibbons of whatever-the-fuck it is you’ve selected from the animal kingdom to ‘justify’ the threesome you and your girlfriend (sorry, primary partner) had last week.

Of course, people can express their polyamorous inclinations however they like. Just because I (and, let’s be honest, many others) think it’s cringe, doesn’t make it wrong. But we do, my god, need some better PR.

To me, open, ethically non-monogamous and polyamorous relationships are a means to maximise fun, intimacy, and opportunities for mayhem. I LOVE that I get to gossip with my partner about how his latest date went. I love handing him my phone so he can swipe through my Hinge. I love fulfilling every negative stereotype there is about being a bisexual woman (non-commital, sexual glut, has male boyfriend, etc).

And I love that, after being subjected to the horrors of toe-socks-at-the-orgy, I get to come home and tell my boyfriend all about it.

***

There is a whole other piece on media representations of polyamory – which is what I intended to write when I opened my laptop. This turned into more of a rant than a thoughtful, substantive think-piece on the matter.