Can You Love Two People at the Same Time? A Research Report

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

The Proceedings of the Southwestern Anthropological Association

Publisher

Southwestern Anthropological Association

First page number:

47

Last page number:

77

Abstract

The contemporary U.S. American model of love is that it is essentially a dyadic bond between two and only two individuals. Out of this bond arises feelings of eroticism, passion, and companionship which somehow merge together to form a unified conceptual whole. Co-existing with this ideal is an alternative model that survives in the popular medium of films that holds out the possibility of simultaneously loving two people at the same time. Our study was designed to explore how individuals caught in a concurrent love bond experience and managed their relationships). Implications of our findings are discussed below.

Keywords

Dual love; Polyamory; Sex differences; U.S. society

Disciplines

Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.


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