I’m married—but my wife and I aren’t monogamous. Like around four to five percent of people in the United States, we practice ethical non-monogamy, aka ENM. But despite the popularity of non-monogamy, there’s no option for people like me when it comes to Facebook’s relationship status options, and it’s long past time for that to change.
In 2014, I founded a prominent Facebook group I administer that joins together individuals practicing and interested in ethical non-monogamy in my region. In addition to providing a forum for healthy communication, members share references, articles, and news relevant to our community. Since then, I have been in discussion with Facebook about the importance of expanding their “Relationship Status” category to include consideration of ethically non-monogamous relationships.
This issue is personal to me. I’ve been married for 11 years, and we’ve both always given each other the option of seeing other people. When I approached the social media platform, I had a wife as well as a serious girlfriend of three years, and sought to acknowledge both of my partners equally as part of my identity on social media. In the 20 years that I have practiced polyamory, this has not been the first time that I have held salient relationships with more than one person, but it did represent a time in our society where Facebook’s prominence and saturation was a pivotal part of self-identification. Right now, my Facebook relationship status shows me as married, but I want my network to know that I’m a polyamorous individual for whom “relationship status” may change to include more than my partner–and to know that this option is available without excluding one or the other(s).
Despite our social evolution to recognize gender and gender identity variations, alternative relationship statuses, creative cohabitation concepts, and varying familial relationship identities, there has been no progress in the largest online social media platform’s inclusion of those in ENM relationships. This is quite shocking and unsettling for me and many others.
Recently, I came across a Change.org campaign to petition Facebook for exactly what I had requested in 2014. Almost 600 of us have signed, and many of those who have heard of this campaign have also written to Facebook directly, but there has remained no follow-up from the platform. This is one of multiple Change.org campaigns toward this exact movement.
We are in a day and age of progress and evolution, and, in my opinion, Facebook has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain in expanding inclusion status. There would be no financial cost to the media giant, only the potential for gain, to add this small option, especially as the popularity of Facebook has only rapidly declined due to its reputation as “not as hip” as more current and inclusive platforms such as Twitter and TikTok.
A large contingency of my ENM friends and group members remain on Facebook as a source of community. We have reached enough maturity in life to have the acumen and pride to identify ourselves as ENM and to be able to recognize multiple partners in a confident and thoughtful manner. This is not a label or status that should be taken less seriously than any other, and Facebook’s lack of consideration for its clientele is disheartening.
Below is my original letter to Facebook, followed by the Facebook team’s formal reply to me.
Kiki Attonito:
December 8, 2014
To whom it may concern at Facebook:
I kindly request that you consider including the option for FB account holders to have more than one “relationship status.” Polyamory, commonly known as an “open relationship,” but (hopefully less and less as time goes on) esoterically understood as love for more than one person, is alive and well in our world and I believe that this social media service should honor this. Polyamory is not polygamy; as such, I am not requesting that individuals be provided access to show marriage to more than one person. (Wanted to dispel that one asap). However, your option for “complicated” and “open” relationships suggests your willingness to honor the reality that individuals have more than one partner or lover. I am married and I have a girlfriend. My girlfriend is not able to “tag” me as in a relationship with her, understandably because you are likely protecting your members’ relationship statuses. However, given the option to “approve” her addition of me, thereby allowing me to share with the world my “second” (and not necessarily in that order LOL) relationship would enable me to feel embraced fully for who I am in my “profile” by my social media provider of choice. Please provide me your feedback on this topic, as I am an advocate for “poly issues” here in South Florida and, case in point, universally.
Facebook team:
December 10, 2014
Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. We’re constantly trying to improve Facebook, so it’s important that we hear from the people who use it. Unfortunately, we can’t respond to your emails individually, but we are reading them. We appreciate you taking the time to write to us.
I continue to work toward equal and respectful consideration of ENM relationships in my daily life. The social media giant has an incredible opportunity here to show inclusive support to all communities it serves, and thereby to expand and retain its clientele. In 2022, it’s time for Facebook to move forward, not backward.
I choose to remain in the Facebook community to maintain this fight and discover and join others with the same values. The support my group offers people is invaluable, especially since many of their friends and family still don’t fully understand or embrace ethical non-monogamy. If Facebook chooses to remain stuck in the past, it will lose people like me and millions of others who want to be open and celebrate our fulfilling, healthy and ethically non-monogamous relationships.
In the eight years since I first wrote to Facebook, open relationships have become even more mainstream, with celebrities like Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Shailene Woodley sharing their non-monogamous status with the world.
When I wrote the original letter, I was married and had a girlfriend. Now I have one partner, but the issue remains just as, if not more, important to me because of my passionate and ceaseless support of my community as well as friends, partners, and all who have beautifully come to embrace identity as more than a term that fits into a few historically-designed checkboxes. Facebook has a golden opportunity here to spark change; will it take it?