Amy L. Sasser

16 June 2013

Excess of Love:

Can Two Families Create One Utopia?

        I have more than enough love to give. I love my husband of nearly 19 years dearly, as well as our five children. However, it doesn’t stop there. I also deeply love my two best friends and their three children. This love is reciprocal on all fronts, so much so, in fact, that we have discussed making this extended family into a more official and permanent bond by living either in a communal home or two adjacent houses. In working toward this common goal, we have encountered many questions and found some unexpected answers. Before enrolling in this course, the idea of “utopia” had not occurred to us; however, I have come to realize that our goal is to create our own little bubble of utopia in a world that will have a hard time understanding our choices. While we have an idea of where we would like to go with our plans, the minutia of beginning the process has been daunting, to say the least. Where can our two families find solid advice and direction in our quest to become one?

        In the beginning of this process, the closest similar situation I could find information on came from a newly rising trend called polyamory. This word has come to carry a connotation of free love, swappable partners and non-stop orgies; however, that is not precisely what it means. Dictionary.com defines polyamory as “participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships.” While our extended family is not involved in any sexual activities outside of our marriages, we are a group of people who love and care for one another deeply. By using that definition, I was able to find some information that could prove helpful along the way to becoming a blended household. One website I visited had a guide to practical matters that would apply equally to us as we merge our resources and families. For example, in securing housing for a group of 12 people, we could face many obstacles. If we cannot build a home to our own specifications, we would have to rent. We would need to keep in mind that “it is easier to rent from an individual landlord than from an agency. . . . An individual landlord will often rent to people that he has a good feeling about in some way” (“Housing”). This same website also has useful information on dividing finances fairly when income levels or family sizes are inconsistent within the group, shopping for food or other necessities in bulk to save time and money, dealing with inquiries from curious outsiders, and even some of the most common drawbacks of these types of arrangements—all issues pertinent to my own situation, even though it’s not exactly the same circumstance.

        Moving forward then, when I entered this course on Utopias, I never expected it to inform my personal research as well as it has. I have come to realize that our goal encompasses many of the tenets of a literary or historical utopia. Some of these conventions, found on Dr. White’s website include: setting (we will need a new and specialized home or homes), journey (this will surely be an adventure), stylistic devices (we will assuredly have much discussion on the topic), and, most clearly, extended family, as our ultimate goal is to live harmoniously as one unit. Following this theme, I began to look into some existing intentional communities to find out if their large-scale successes could be used as a guide in achieving our own little piece of paradise. Surprisingly, I discovered cohousing.org, a group that promotes a different type of communal living. In short, “cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods” (“Cohousing”). Each family involved in this type of intentional community has their own separate house, but the people of the group share many common facilities including “a common kitchen, dining area, sitting area, children’s playroom and laundry, and also may contain a workshop, library, exercise room, crafts room and/or one or two guest rooms” (“Cohousing”). This surprising movement is becoming more and more common, and may be a good option for us to consider until we are able to purchase our own land and build what we want. Though we know that will be a long time in coming, I feel our ground work is on the way to being done, and the idea no longer seems so far-fetched and unusual to me. I know now that help is out there.

        As we move forward, this help will be greatly appreciated and much-needed. I have discovered these few “jumping-off” points, and I know that utopia—at least my own small version of it—is not impossible as long as we plan well and have realistic expectations. My excitement is building as I lean toward beginning this epic journey where I will be able to live happily with both my biological and my chosen families, where I can share all the love I have to give.

Works Cited

     "How to Find Housing for the Poly Family." 2004. polyfamilies.com. PolyFamilies. Web. 14 June 2013. <http://www.polyfamilies.com/polyhousing.html>.

     polyamory. n.d. Dictionary.com, LLC. Web. 12 June 2013. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polyamory>.

     "What is Cohousing?" 2013. cohousing.org. The Cohousing Association of the United States. Web. 15 June 013. <http://www.cohousing.org/what_is_cohousing>.