Polyamory Advocates Call For Facebook To Allow Listing Of More Than One Partner

A polyamory advocacy group is calling on Facebook to allow users to list more than one romantic partner on their profiles. 

In an open letter last week, the Organisation for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN), told the tech giant that Facebook’s current relationship status feature was ‘exclusionary’ towards people who practise ethical non-monogamy.

‘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,’ said the letter.

Currently Facebook allows users to indicate that they’re ‘in an open relationship’ but the group finds this ‘limited’.

The statement argues that since Facebook does not restrict the number of ‘family members’ that can be listed on a user’s profile, it should allow users to ‘indicate all of their romantic and intimate partners, without limit’. 

Ethical non-monogamy, also referred to as consensual non-monogamy, is a term encompassing a range of relationship practices involving multiple partners, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. 

In the US, 4-5% of adults currently practice some form of ethical non-monogamy, with one in five adults entering into a consensually non-monogamous relationship at some point in their lives.

Data from ethical dating app Feeld found that the number of users who mentioned ethical non-monogamy, and poly-related terms in the UK increased by a whopping 140%in 2021.