The delusion in these words is breathtaking. Burrows was so quick to throw off the chains of religion and social norms that she fails to see that she has entered a new kind of bondage: she is bound by the chains of her sexual desires. Little does she know that those butterflies that make her feel so alive will soon become dragons that burn off her soul and reduce her to an empty shell of animalistic appetites. Burrows fails to see that liberty—real liberty—is found in self-government and self-control, not in doing whatever the hell she wants.

Deborah Taj Anapol, author of “Polyamory in the Twenty-First Century,” says polyamory doesn’t offer all the answers newbies expect.

“There is an old story about a highly optimistic little girl who’s asked Santa to bring her a pony for Christmas,” Anapol wrote. “She eagerly awakens on Christmas morning and races downstairs to open her presents only to find a huge pile of horse manure. Her puzzled parents ask her why she’s jumping up and down with excitement and gratitude instead of feeling disappointed. Her response is that with all this shit there must be a pony around somewhere. For many people, polyamory is a bit like this. They are expecting great things—more love, more sex, more family, more fun, more pleasure, more excitement. What they find is more jealousy, possessiveness, manipulation, control, self-centeredness, lies, melodrama, chaos, power struggles, and pain.”

All the love and excitement Burrows wants to enliven her relationship with her baby daddy really is, as Anapol puts it, just a pile of manure.