With Tiger Wood's infidelities being front page news for the past week, infidelity itself has become something of a hot topic. Why do so many men and women insist on cheating on the people they have committed themselves to? Is it because monogamy is a crazy, unattainable goal?

Polyamory, the practice of engaging in multiple romantic relationships at the same time, is regarded by its practitioners as being more natural than monogamy, or to use an equivalent term 'monoamory'. Polyamorous people believe that it is possible, and indeed, natural, to love multiple people at the same time.

Polyamory should not be confused with swinging, in which couples interact sexually with people outside of the relationship without having a romantic attachment to them, nor should it be confused with infidelity in which people lie to their spouses and break the terms of their romantic arrangement in which they agreed to forsake all others, or at least not mess with their genitals.

Polyamory is best defined as a relationship in which both partners agree to some degree of openness. Some practitioners have a very open relationship in which both partners are free to love whoever they want, however it is more common for polyamorous couples to take a more cautious approach and seek a third partner, or perhaps a fourth, and then keep the relationship closed to that circle of people. This allows them to enjoy romantic relationships with more than one person without being exposed to every single sexually transmitted infection that mutates out of the disease pool.

Whilst polyamory is an interesting concept, and no doubt works for some people. (The creator of Wonder Woman lived in a polyamorous relationship with two women, who continued to live together after his death,) it's not for everyone and it's not a solution to infidelity. Why? Because if anything, polyamory requires being more trustworthy and more honest with your partners that monoamory does. When you're in a traditional relationship, the rules are simple. You don't go outside the relationship, if you do, you are a lying little cheat. When you're in a more open relationship, then you have to be able to trust that your partner is acting within the bounds you set up whilst he or she is out and about spreading his or her love around. For this reason, most open relationships have plenty of rules and safeguards set in place to try and keep the people in them safe. You may be able to pursue romantic interests outside of your primary relationship, but that doesn't mean you can have any cocktail waitress you take a fancy to.

Polyamory is an interesting approach to the problem of human sexuality, after all, it seems very strange that we accept that parents can love more than one child, or that we can feel affection for more than one friend, but we then fairly arbitrarily decide that we can only truly feel romantic love for one person. It seems to make sense that we should be more open in our romantic relationships, after all, it would save us the pain and heartache of being cheated on, right?

Maybe. Even dedicated polyamorous people sometimes become jealous seeing their partners fall in love with other people, and there are other drawbacks too, pregnancy, increased exposure to STI's, greater potential for being cheated on, (if people cheat when they're in traditional couples, mathematically, its highly likely that they will cheat when they are in triads or foursomes or quintets.) For every polyamory success story, there are plenty more that end badly. Someone lies, someone cheats, someone has their heart broken, and worst case scenario, someone ends up with a life long disease.

Ironically, it would seem that polyamory is best conducted by the sort of people who would be highly successful in monogamous relationships. That's bad news for the serial cheater.

Polyamory may be something akin to communism. In other words, it's an excellent idea in theory, but more often than not, a train wreck in practice.