Polyamorists lobby Facebook to change ‘exclusionary’ relationship status

‘This restriction perpetuates the erasure and marginalisation of non-monogamous relationships’

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An advocacy organisation for polyamory and non-monogamy has called upon the Facebook app, and its parent company Meta, to update the platform’s relationship status feature to include people with multiple partners.

On 16 June, members of the Organisation for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy (OPEN) penned an open letter to Tom Alison – the vice president of Facebook app – asking that the site’s relationship status feature be changed to include people who are in relationships with more than one person.

The letter said that by “restricting users to one relationship status (and one tagged partner) on their profile, non-monogamous individuals are arbitrarily prevented from expressing the full range of their connections on the Facebook App”.

Since its founding in 2004, Facebook has become one of the most widely used social media platforms for people to share their everyday lives with friends and family -- including their relationship status. Facebook currently invites users to display their relationship status under a number of options: single, in a relationship, engaged, married, in a civil partnership, in a domestic partnership, it’s complicated, separated, divorced, and widowed.

While Facebook users also have the option of marking their relationship status as in an “open relationship,” the advocacy organisation believes that this is a limited recognition of non-monogamous relationships.

Ethical non-monogamy, also known as consensual non-monogamy, refers to a range of relationship practices involving multiple partners, with the understanding of consent and full knowledge of the relationships involved. Meanwhile, polyamory is one type of relationship style that falls under the umbrella of ethical non-monogamy, and it specifically refers to having intimate relationships with multiple people at the same time.

Polyamorous relationships are different for every couple. In some cases, there can be one “primary” couple, which is prioritised over any other relationship they may have. For others, it can indicate multiple partners without any prioritisation of one connection.

It is estimated that about four to five per cent of adults living in the United States practice some form of ethical non-monogamy, with one in five adults entering into an ethically non-monogamous relationship at some point in their lives.

OPEN believes that given the growth in popularity of non-monogamy, restricting Facebook users to listing only one relationship status on their profile page is “arbitrary, exclusionary, and contrary to Meta’s core values.”

The letter continued: “At best, this restriction perpetuates the erasure and marginalisation of non-monogamous relationships; at worst, it harms non-monogamous users by perpetuating social stigmas around the validity and authenticity of their relationships.”

OPEN’s letter was signed by many members and activists of the non-monogamist community, including the organisation’s executive director, Brett Chamberlin; Amanda Wilson, founder of the non-monogamous dating app #open; and Dedeker Winston, owner and producer of the Multiamory Podcast.

In an interview with The Daily Dot, Chamberlain said that Facebook’s relationship status feature “contributes to the discrimination” of non-monogamous individuals and “perpetuates harm” against people in non-monogamous relationships.

“Facebook’s decision to structure the relationship status feature such that only one relationship is permitted encodes the social preference for monogamy currently, and in so doing, it communicates to non-monogamous individuals that their relationships are somehow less than or other,” he told the publication.

The Independent has contacted Meta for comment.