Sabrina and Ben Gallegos had been married for a year when they met Allie Bullock in July 2014. The women were co-workers and became friends, so when Bullock and her boyfriend broke up, the Gallegoses offered her a place to stay while she sorted things out.

The three grew close, and over a period of about seven months, the Gallegoses both decided they wanted Bullock to be more than a friend. As Utahns, their polyamorous “throuple” has been mistaken for polygamy on more than one occasion, but they are part of a growing number of Americans who practice this relationship style.

“I started to see this relationship blossom between the two of them,” Ben Gallegos said. “It was a deep friendship, it was a different kind of connection. I couldn’t help but admire [it], and seeing Sabrina fall in love with Allie, I kind of started to fall in love with Allie through her eyes.”

The concept of a relationship like this was new to him.

“I had no idea that ‘polyamory’ was even a term,” he said. “Looking stuff up online, there’s other people like us, there’s a whole community.”

Polygamy and polyamory are different — the latter is a fluid continuum based on the freedom to love multiple partners consensually, while the former is marriage to multiple people. While not all involved in polyamorous relationships want to get married, both groups at times must navigate issues like hospital visits and insurance coverage.

Practicing polyamory

In February 2020, the Utah Legislature lowered the criminal charge from a felony to a misdemeanor for a married person taking another or multiple spouses.

It was called the bigamy bill, and was aimed at polygamists. Then-Sen. Deidre Henderson, the sponsor of the bill, said, “We removed the fear of otherwise law-abiding polygamists of being jailed or having their children taken away from them.”

While polyamory has not gained legal recognition in Utah, it has elsewhere. In July 2020, polyamorous unions were legalized by the town of Somerville, Massachusetts, providing them the same rights as married couples, like hospital visits and shared health insurance coverage.

Utah state Sen. Derek Kitchen said he is willing to fight for the option to practice polyamory. He has fought before.

Back in 2013, Kitchen was part of the federal case that led to Utah recognizing same-sex marriages. This was before the Supreme Court legalized these unions nationwide.

At the time, as he disclosed for the first time in a New Yorker article published in March 2021, he was practicing polyamory. He opened up about the reactions he has received since that article came out, and about the future of polyamory, in an interview on KUER’s RadioWest in April.

“I never imagined or desired out of the gate a polyamorous relationship, it’s just how a relationship with a primary partner evolved,” he said.

Kitchen told host Doug Fabrizio about his experience fighting for the right to marry his former husband, while still feeling like he couldn’t be honest about his relationship style at the time. But understanding of polyamory has increased since then, and there isn’t as much of a stigma.

“It’s about individual freedom, it’s about liberty, it’s about empowering people to be intentional about their family-making,” he told Fabrizo. “I think we’re able to talk about it in a productive way that allows for a healthy dialogue and discussion without this thick layer of shame or judgment.”

A deliberate lifestyle

Amy Peterson, a film major at Salt Lake Community College, made a documentary about polyamory this fall called “Love One Another: Polyamory in Utah.”

In her film, Utahns — including the Gallegoses and Bullock — share what polyamory can look like and how they believe it has helped them have healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

“It wasn’t that we felt like there was something missing from our marriage,” Ben Gallegos said. “It just kind of seemed like there was a puzzle piece that we didn’t know needed to be there. And when she was always around, it always felt complete.”

When they came out about their relationship in 2017, friends and family had mixed reactions. Some confronted them angrily, taking issue on religious or moral grounds, and then stopped talking to them.

But for the most part, people have stuck with them in the six years they have been together. Not long into their throuple relationship, Sabrina Gallegos gave birth to a daughter, Emery, in 2015. The new baby helped some family members to overcome their initial problems with their relationship.

“It’s just taken [them] a lot of time, a lot of years, a lot of interactions, a lot of opportunities ... to see our daughter and appreciate the young lady that she’s becoming,” Ben Gallegos said. “The person that [Emery] is today, [Allie] is one-third equally responsible for everything that that little girl is. When Emery was born, Sabrina held her, I held her, Allie held her, and it’s all she’s ever known, she’s just always had three parents.”

For Berk Forbes and Daley Yoshimura, both in their 30s and living in Salt Lake City, polyamory has been a deliberate lifestyle. They live together and have been together romantically since 2019, but they are non-hierarchical and do not call each other their primary partner. For them, the appeal of polyamory is the freedom to love and experience others outside the traditional boundaries of monogamy.

“Daley and I get to come together and be like, OK, this is what we want our relationship to be,’” Forbes said. “And if I have a relationship with someone else, me and that person get to sit down and decide for ourselves just between us, too, what do we want it to be.”

Sometimes they are both dating other people, sometimes just one of them is, and sometimes neither of them are.

“That’s a misconception with polyamory – that you’re always dating multiple people,” Forbes said. “That’s not the case at all. Certainly, space exists for that, but you get to decide and navigate it on your own terms.”

According to Forbes, people sometimes dismiss polyamory because they think it comes from the flawed belief that one person won’t fulfill them. That’s an unrealistic expectation, he said.

“No one single person can give me everything I need in life,” he said. “You’re attaching a negative connotation to that because of how you’ve been conditioned, but there’s actually nothing wrong with that. That’s humbling and valuable to accept. I can’t imagine being everything for Daley or for anyone else. That would exhaust me.”

Difficulties exist

One difficult aspect of polyamory, Peterson said, is feeling a need to show that this relationship style is legitimate.

“A lot of people don’t understand what it is,” she said. “And so there’s this pressure to show that it’s working, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Meeting new people, Forbes said, can also be tricky. “I’ve always loved meeting people in real life. I find it really exciting to meet someone and ask for their number, but how do I slip this into conversation casually that I’m polyamorous and I have a partner, but I would love to take you out on a date. It’s weird and it’s awkward sometimes. So I think that’s the crux.”

Dating apps can help, but they are exhausting, said Yoshimura. “I know it’s a tool and it’s really straightforward to weed out who you would get along with or not. But sometimes I get bogged down by the texting back and forth. And then also just living life in general and not trying to be on my phone all the time.”

There are internal struggles, too. Ben Gallegos said, “As a throuple, comparison vs. equality can be hard. We want to treat each other as equals without comparing each other. Comparison will kill joy faster than anything in this lifestyle.”

To get out of the comparison mindset, Gallegos said, “We remind each other that our relationships are unique and each one has different needs. Uniformity wouldn’t fulfill all of our needs.”

Finding what works, and what doesn’t

For Peterson, whose film attempts to demystify polyamory and who identifies as polyamorous herself, it’s just as important that people understand what it is as what it is not.

“Some people feel this pressure to say they’re polyamorous and that they have to be dating multiple people at the same time, but you can identify as poly and just have one partner,” she said.

Even though polyamory is about realizing a capacity for deep emotional connections with multiple people, Peterson said, it doesn’t have to amount to love, just like in a traditional relationship. “It doesn’t have to be on that level. I have yet to really feel like I’m in love with multiple people at the same time, but I feel strongly that I have that capacity.”

Peterson got married at 20 and found herself struggling with monogamy, ultimately divorcing her husband after two years in 2018. Peterson has been practicing polyamory for about three years.

“Trying to be monogamous just made me feel like there was something wrong with me for wanting something else or for not wanting to spend all my time with one person,” she said. “I could never go back to those rigid ways of doing things, because I like being open to the possibilities.”

It’s about intention

Monogamy is undergoing the pressures of a changing world, according to Esther Perel, a bestselling author and psychotherapist, who gave an interview to Lewis Howes for his podcast “The School of Greatness.”

“In the era of self-fulfillment, and the right to happiness, we don’t have more desires today than the previous generations, we just feel more entitled to fulfill our desires,” she said, “and we feel that we have a right to be happy.”

This ideal of the freedom to choose is the driving force of Peterson’s film. She hopes that for those watching, polyamory will be understood less as an avoidance of commitment and more of an intentional decision on when, and with whom, to commit.

“It’s not something that’s trying to tear society apart,” she said. “So much of [polyamory] is about community and supporting one another. It’s about having this network of care and love and the capacity and the availability to love people. From a polyamorous standpoint, there is no limit to the amount of love that we can give.”

Matt Didisheim wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune. 

###

NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORK We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text:

This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Matt Didisheim wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.

Liz Whittaker has been in the theater business for more than 20 years — mostly as an actor, with the occasional job as a director or sound designer.

Then, one day in 2018, Whittaker’s friend invited her to join a workshop about intimacy direction. Whittaker’s interest was sparked immediately. She saw how her passions for storytelling, social justice and mental health advocacy could all be combined in working as an intimacy professional.

Whittaker has spent the last three years developing a career as an intimacy director — someone who “helps choreograph scenes of intimacy,” she said. “The kind of closest parallel to this role is like a stunt coordinator or fight director.”

Whittaker’s role as an intimacy director is twofold. While working with actors to develop a story with their body language and movements, she also helps actors develop skills to communicate their boundaries and speak up for themselves.

Vulnerability on stage

Intimacy direction is a relatively new career in the theater industry. According to the University of Rochester, it’s only been practiced for the last 10 to 15 years.

Whittaker is based in Salt Lake City, and has worked on film and theater projects around Utah. According to her bio, she is providing intimacy direction on West Valley Arts’ upcoming production of the musical “A Tale of Two Cities,” and Plan-B Theatre’s upcoming play “Balthazar.”

“A really major part of why intimacy direction exists as an industry now, more efficiently than it ever has, is there’s room for so much abuse of power,” Whittaker said.

The power that directors have over actors, she said, often is exploited.

“It’s really easy for directors and teachers and people in power to be, like, ‘No, push yourself further, push yourself further, give me more, give me more,’” Whittaker said.

Actors, she said, use their bodies to tell someone else’s story. In those moments, an actor can be left feeling especially vulnerable, as someone else tells them how to perform. Having an intimacy director on set can help disrupt this power dynamic, by moderating how directors and actors go about their work. Acting out intimate scenes can feel especially vulnerable, but having an intimacy director choreograph these scenes can help them feel less personally revealing for actors.

“You don’t have to bring your own personal sexual experiences into this role,” Whittaker said. “I can tell you what to do with your voice. I can tell you what to do with your body. It will still be your body, which is vulnerable, but you don’t have to make it real.”

An empowered space

When working on a project, Whittaker said she doesn’t focus on creating a “safe” space so much as she aims to create an “empowered” space.

Creating a safe space could mean going to every actor individually, asking them about their boundaries and triggers, and then sharing these details with everyone else in the crew. Theoretically, this might eliminate the risk of someone’s boundaries being pushed. Realistically, it would be impossible to implement.

“What I’m more interested in is creating a space where actors are given the time, the space and the tools to speak up for themselves,” Whittaker said.

To do this, Whittaker said she gives actors example phrases they can use when they need to express a boundary. She helps facilitate conversations about boundaries between actors. Whittaker also helps actors care for their well-being by teaching them different kinds of exercises they can do to start or end their work, or to just check in. One of these is a closure exercise aimed at helping actors separate their roles from their real lives.

“Closure is a way to tell our brains and our bodies that what we were just doing is not real,” Whittaker said. Sometimes, people’s brains and bodies can’t tell the difference.

Storytelling bodies

“Every body is a storytelling body,” Whittaker said. Eye contact, the way someone grabs another character or the way a character breathes after being touched all work to convey a story.

“If you’re just looking at your drink while you’re saying that line, it means that you don’t actually care. But if you’re holding your drink and making direct eye contact, that tells a different story,” Whittaker said.

It’s these kinds of details that Whittaker looks at as she choreographs intimate scenes between characters. For example, if someone uses their pointer finger to trace along someone’s body, that conveys possessiveness, whereas using the whole hand conveys tenderness.

“Is this a moment of non-consent or assault, or is this a moment of uncertain consent?” Whittaker uses questions like this, about the story she’s conveying, to inform what kind of movements to incorporate into her choreography.

Josi Hinds, a communications major at the University of Utah, wrote this story an arts writer for the Daily Utah Chronicle. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune

###

NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORK

We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Josi Hinds wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.

In a cloud of smoke and people, money exchanges hands, and turbochargers spool and whistle. Despite quick growth across the valley, track closures and a recent enforcement push by the Salt Lake City Police Department, street racing, as a hobby, remains unchanged.

People race in the streets “because we don’t have a track,” said Shawn Atkin, who primarily races on Utah’s freeways late at night. “Fast cars aren’t going to go away because we don’t have a track.”

Street racers say they have been forced to find alternatives for racing as the Salt Lake Valley’s population swells, turning once-quiet roads into busy thoroughfares and dangerous places to hold their contests. In response to a surge in calls between 2020 and 2021, combined with legislation for stronger penalties for street racing, police have tried to curb gatherings but say racers and spectators tend to scatter to other venues, such as the canyons or highways.

With the 2017 closure of Rocky Mountain Raceway, some racers moved to the streets, stuck in a cat-and-mouse game with law enforcement. From 2020 to 2021, Salt Lake Police Department have seen a 476% increase in service calls.

While street racing isn’t anything new, with small outcroppings of automotive enthusiasts taking part, it has been ramping up in intensity since the closure of RMR, as well as the pandemic beginning, authorities say.

“This has been an issue with the department for a long time,” said Det. Michelle Peterson of the Salt Lake City police. She did not provide specific numbers for street racing severity and frequency.

Racing has migrated, Peterson said, from controlled environments like race tracks to the uncontrolled environment of streets, primarily around Salt Lake City’s industrial areas in the Pioneer Division, with the patrol headquarters located at 1040 West 700 South.

“Obviously, street racing impacts businesses, and people being able to get in and out of the business, because the roadway is blocked,” Peterson said.

The population of Salt Lake County has grown by nearly 160,000 people over the last 12 years, from 1,032,997 in 2010, to 1,186,421 in 2021. With that population growth comes an expansion to the western and southern reaches of the Salt Lake Valley, bringing businesses and traffic to what was once an oft-overlooked part of the area.

Fast and furious

There are a myriad of car hobbies in America that are linked with racing, and that link has endured as long as there have been cars. Across America, grassroots race tracks, like Utah’s Rocky Mountain Raceway, shuttered for reasons ranging from lack of revenue to noise complaints from real estate developers and residents of new buildings.

Not all car enthusiasts believe people race on streets because of a lack of a track, however. Shannon Manning, an attendee at a November car community meetup — where owners will showcase their cars and buy, sell, or exchange merchandise and parts — said he believes the recent crackdowns by police are understandable, due to the often contentious showcasing that can happen at such events, even if enforcement interferes with the hobby.

“It’s pretty reasonable, [but] a lot of people end up putting themselves into that situation.” he said.

Legislative crackdown

In March 2022, Gov. Spencer Cox signed SB53, which amended the state’s reckless driving laws to include some speeding violations.

The most significant change is the amendments to street racing penalties, such as “allowing the seizure of a vehicle that is not street legal that is engaged in a speed race,” as well as providing a “minimum fine for a speeding violation where the individual was traveling at a speed of 100 miles per hour or more.”

The bill had bipartisan support. The bill’s sponsor in the Utah Senate was Sen. Jani Iwamoto, D-Salt Lake City. The sponsor on the House side was Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden.

Iwamoto, who left the Legislature in December, said that while safety concerns were the focus of the bill, local businesses also reported property damage and other crimes related to pop-up speed racing events.

“It was really interesting to learn about what risks there were and the impact to businesses,” she said.

Wilcox did not respond to requests for comment.

Peterson said the law, which went into effect in May, has already had an effect. “We’ve already seen a decrease [in racing] and increase in the [penalties] for when you’re participating, when you’re there to watch and/or participate,” she said. “There is a more severe penalty, and that has been a deterrent for sure.”

Showcasing leading to arrests

Still, attendees are getting even more likely to behave erratically and put themselves in danger, as showcased in posts by influencers with tags such as #streetrace and #takeover. This further drives banter on social media platforms and channels competing for likes and shares,.

As events grow in popularity, so too does the contention among attendees regarding who is fastest, most stylish or most willing to show off, such as holding street races or drifting on public roads, with the most bold driver gaining notoriety, a following and potentially cash prizes.

“Kids nowadays, they really don’t know what it was like,” Manning said. “It’s a matter of who [is the most bold] at the end of the day.”

Not every car meet-up turns into a street racing event, however. Most involve dozens of people gathering in such places as parking garages and public parking lots. There, they share stories, talk about their cars or why they got into the automotive hobby.

“Police should just let them do their thing. I get it when they say there’s street racing and all, but it’s not [everyone]. It’s just the people that don’t think, don’t care about the car community,” said Dan De La Rosa, who attended a meet-up on Nov. 11.

With the recent push for police enforcement, combined with the shutdown of race tracks such as Rocky Mountain Raceway, police departments have consistently been relying on reactive policies to enforce driving laws, and with that comes the potential need for collaboration among police, racers, and tracks looking for funding.

“I can’t really speak to that, all I know is that the roads that we’re talking about, in the city, are not designed for racing,” Peterson said. “As far as where it can happen, that’s kind of beyond my deal, but it cannot happen in the city.”

 Alexander Campbell wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

###

NOTE TO MEDIA PARTNERS PUBLISHING WORK

We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Alexander Campbell wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.