Evie and Bobbi, thanks for exploring the nuances of this issue that has been bugging me ever since Albert Ross objected in his blog to many polyamorists not wanting to describe their "love style" as a "lifestyle." I think we have every right to maintain that a way of having adult intimate relationships does not comprise an entire lifestyle. It just seems so obvious to me, and I'm glad to get more understanding of why. I'm a literature/language/history nerd, and agree that, as one resource I saw said, the very word "lifestyle" is overused. It's sloppy to call poly a lifestyle.
Here I want to break down what Albert said in his blog (since he seemed to be asking for a discussion of this there, but then pulled the plug).
Polyamory is, literally, a lifestyle.
It is not literally a lifestyle. As we have determined, it can be part of a lifestyle, but not broadly a lifestyle.
There's such a thing as specialization, where a word's meaning narrows over time in popular usage. An example is "doctor", which originally referred to a teacher (and is still used as an honorific for those who acquire certain university degrees) but has changed over time to usually refer to a person who practices medicine.
Yes, it's a given that language evolves, of course. That's not the issue here.
But "lifestyle" has a strange semantic narrowing that only seems to occur among practitioners of non-monogamy: apparently, some swingers appropriate the general noun and refer to their practice of non-monogamy as "The Lifestyle".
I wouldn't say the word's definition has narrowed. I think it has expanded, probably too much to be of much help anymore, without clearly defining it in every case (in psychology, in marketing, in casual social use).
I would assert that most practitioners of swinging have been calling this sex practice "The Lifestyle" since the 1960s, as a coy euphemism for "I consensually fuck other people besides my spouse." (Of course, some swinging is more coerced than actually joyfully consented to, but that's another topic.)
There are, of course, an enormous number of practices that could be described as lifestyles; elevating one of them to "The Lifestyle" is an arbitrary choice.
It wasn't arbitrary. It was coy. Was it useful? Sure. During the sexual revolution of the 1960s, there were many things that were spoken of in whispers, to avoid complete social approbation. Taking the word lifestyle and appropriating it to describe their sexual practice definitely tainted it in some ways.
The use of this newer term lifestyle made this sexual practice sound cool, exclusive, trendy, special, like a secret password, wink wink nudge nudge pineapple on the porch.
People who enjoy fishing and spend their weekends rod in hand could as easily begin referring to fishing as "The Lifestyle".
If you look at it from a consumerist point of view, fishing does require a lot of special equipment you have to purchase, so marketers could find it useful to call frequent fishing a lifestyle. But I don't think I'd say that a friend who likes to fish on weekends is practicing "the fishing lifestyle." There are huge differences in types of fishing, in a quiet pond, in a rushing river, casting at the edge of the ocean, going out on a sturdy boat to do deep sea fishing with a rod and strapped into a chair to reel in a marlin, or scuba diving and using a harpoon. Then there is the career of fishing, which requires specialized boats or ships, nets, winches, refrigerated holds, long-term storage for your own food, since you're out at sea for weeks at a time, etc. I think a professional fisherman could be seen as living a lifestyle more than a casual weekend fisherman, since being away at sea all day, every day, sometimes not being on actual land for weeks or even a year at a time, severely impacts what you eat, how you dress, how your romantic and family relationships go, your mental health, how you depend on your shipmates' skills and care for your very survival, and so on.
But fisherfolk hobbyists have no need for the coy euphemism of calling the enjoyment of fishing "a lifestyle." There's no need for a code word. They can just say "I like to fish," and no one judges them harshly (unless they practice it to such excess that they ignore their other responsibilities, of course).
Since this usage is so limited in scope, it's sort of obnoxious to see polyamorous people correct others' usage of the common noun "lifestyle" to refer to the practice of polyamorous relationships, claiming that since there's a fundamental difference between the lifestyle of polyamory and the lifestyle of swinging, and swingers have supposedly appropriated the term "The Lifestyle" to refer only to their lifestyle, that it is therefore somehow incorrect to use the common noun to refer to the lifestyle of polyamory.
Albert finds it obnoxious to correct newbies when they call polyamory a lifestyle. I find it obnoxious when people call it a lifestyle, partly because of swingers having appropriated the term, which thereby makes it seem as if swinging and poly are the same, and partly because the (over)use of the word is sloppy, vague, confusing and unhelpful.
So many newbies, and I mean many many, come here thinking that the "poly lifestyle" precisely means a triad, with a MF couple "adding a third" (the unicorn, the hot bi babe). Then they are disappointed. The couple hurts each other, and they damage their unicorns, because they think they're so ethically practicing an accepted "lifestyle," so don't understand how come it keeps going so horribly wrong.
To put that another way, if swingers described an instance of their relatively casual partner-swapping as "The Relationship", would you upbraid anyone who tried to describe their polyamorous bond with one of their partners as "a relationship"?
A relationship is not defined by casual fuckery, imo. If the swinger considered their sex partner to also be a good friend whom they see regularly for platonic activities, such as eating together, playing games, talking about their lives in a deeper way (e.g., a "friend with benefits"), then I'd say they have a relationship with this person, even if it's not fully intimate. As we know, in swinging, the married or coupled dyad reigns supreme. They aren't supposed to put nearly as much value into their [cough] relationships with their sex partners. "Don't get romantic!"
I'm sort of hoping your reaction to that example is "Of course not, that's ridiculous." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure, he has to "hope" that, because his argument is weak.
