Holidays When You're Polyamorous

Written By Leanne Yau

How do polyamorous people celebrate the winter holidays? Great question. It depends. The vast majority of non monogamous people, I know, because of time constraints, tend to extend their holiday period over several days, rather than focusing on one specific day like Christmas or Boxing Day. So if you're visiting multiple households, it's easier to do it over several days than try and pack it all in one day.

This also highly depends on whose families are actually accepting of polyamory. My family isn't cool with it. My metamours family isn't cool with it, but our shared partner's family is very, very chill. So we're going to be spending Christmas with them, which makes it a lot easier.

And separately to this, my partner and I are going to be flying to China next year for Chinese New Year with my extended family. If you're not someone who celebrates with your family of origin, you could always do it yourself. Celebrate with friends, have a potluck. It doesn't have to be on the actual day.

In terms of gifts, not everyone has the means to get that many people that many presents at the same time. So sometimes you can do a Secret Santa, but overall, everyone is different. So it's important to check in with your partners for your specific situation, figure out what your expectations are, and make sure you're on the same page, because making assumptions will just lead to disappointment and potentially resentment, and no one wants that at this time of year.

It’s absolutely impossible to encapsulate all the different situations that can come up when navigating spending the holidays with multiple partners in one video, but I hope that this is a jumping off point for you to start thinking about it if you haven’t yet. How and with whom are you spending the holidays?

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Leanne Yau
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