Decolonizing love: Educators talk polyamory on campus

Polyamory educators encouraged the audience to expand their connections and care network in order to foster community during a speech at the University of Richmond as a part of their mission to reimagine relationships and embrace human connection to make polyamory accessible to all. 

Nick Piperno and Millie Boella from Decolonizing Love, an educational duo that challenges conventional narratives around relationships, spoke to UR students, alumni, faculty, and other guests about the colonization and capitalization of love and about how to have healthier communication in relationships.

Piperno and Boella spoke to a crowd of about 75 people at the Jepson Alumni Center as the keynote event of Sex+ week, an event series that centers around the ideas of sex-positivity, healthy relationships, and healing through care.

“Do we love small?” Piperno said “How do we love small? How can we love bigger so we can create love for everyone?” 

The presentation and workshop centered around learning about love, its origin and development, as well as how we show love in family units and to potential partners. 

Piperno and Boella asked the audience to have small group discussions at their tables about unique family and kinship structures, their personal care networks and monogamy. 

“I think that a lot of college students are non-monogamous but using that label feels kind of taboo,” senior Shea Baker said when asked to share her table’s thoughts. 

Community members also participated in the discussions and Q&A, answering questions about how sharing time with the partners or friends of their significant others can feel isolating or create feelings of jealousy. Students reflected on this, along with how to lessen these feelings by having a larger village of people you can be supported by. 

“It was really insightful seeing how people were talking about their community networks and the way sometimes we kind of exist and the way community exists in family, and the ways they are already trying to decolonize their kinship and familial networks,” senior Rilwan Akinola said.

Piperno and Boella rounded out the workshop by recapping the ideas of how love was colonized, like Western culture and the idea of love being something represented by material objects, and the benefits of extended kinship models as opposed to a nuclear family model.

“Community is where you get your resiliency from”, said Boella.

The theme of community and relationships outside of romantic ones was carried through the presentation and the workshop.

“This event specifically was really interesting because I think it was one of the first times that I got to sit in an event talking about family and how important the home is and kinship,” junior Daniel Polonia said.

Decolonizing Love was developed by Boella and Piperno during November 2021, and the two gained traction and a large online following in their first few months of posting on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

“It seems that during Covid a lot of people took some time to think about being alone with their partners and realized ‘Huh. I don’t think I want to be monogamous and alone with this person,” Boella said. “This is a lot, being alone with this person day in and day out, is there something more?’ They had time to go and study on TikTok, online and that is basically how it began.” 

Contact multimedia editor Christina Taylor at christina.taylor@richmond.edu