Species do not evolve in isolation. The web of life means that different species must adapt as they interact with each other. Between predator and prey, there might be an evolutionary arms race as each struggles to beat the other.

Although the interactions between two species can be far more interesting and involved, both species sometimes evolve together in ways that benefit each other. Here are 10 examples of animal and plant species locked in weird relationships.

10 Ants And Acacia Trees

It’s not a shock to find that the acacia ant has a close bond with the acacia tree. What is surprising is just how close their bond is. As they are so immobile, plants are always at risk of being eaten, which is something many organisms find unhelpful. To fend off herbivores, acacia trees have developed sharp thorns and a bitter taste. They have also enslaved whole species of ants to actively fight off their foes.

Acacia ants find acacia trees a welcoming home as the huge thorns can be hollowed out for the ants to live in. Many species of acacia will swell up around these hollow thorns to produce an even larger home for their resident army. To further attract ants to live there, the trees will produce a sweet nectar for adult ants to eat and protein-rich pods for ant larvae to consume.

With such a welcoming place to live, it is no wonder the ants will protect their acacia tree. Up to 30,000 ants may live on a tree. They will hunt out and sting animals that eat their tree, cut up rival plants stealing sunlight, and scrub off fungal pathogens.

The acacia takes no chances that its captive bodyguards might wander away. In its nectar, it adds an enzyme that prevents the ants from eating any other form of sugar. Any ant that tries to leave its acacia tree will soon starve to death.^[1]

9 Myrmecodia And Ants

Acacia trees are not the only plants that have evolved to work closely with ants. Although the acacia ant took its name from the tree in which it lives, the ant plant (Myrmecodia) takes its name from the ants that live in symbiosis with it.

The ant plant of Australia is somewhat unusual anyway in that it lives on other plants. Epiphytes, as such plants are called, land on trees as seeds and grow high above the ground. This offers some protection from things trying to eat them, but the ant plants have an extra layer of defense.

Chambers form in their swollen lower stems that are the perfect homes for ants. The ants do not create these homes; rather, the plant has evolved specifically to produce them. These stinging ants will swarm anything that disturbs their homes.

This is very similar to the acacia ant, but the ant plant benefits from its ants in another way. Nitrogen is one of the main nutrients that plants take from soil. As it grows far from the soil, the ant plant struggles to get enough nitrogen. The plant grows two sorts of chamber within itself—smooth ones where the ants live and rough ones where the ants deposit their waste.

The plant is able to harvest the nitrogen it needs for growth from the ant poop.^[2]

8 Pitcher Plants And Pooping Bats

Pitcher plants are carnivores that will digest the animals that fall into them. This is a response to the low-nitrogen environment in which they live. As the ant plant invites ants to live in it in order to get nitrogen, so the pitchers invite animals to die in them. However, one species of pitcher plant is a more inviting host.

Nepenthes hemsleyana is an unusually large pitcher plant that has evolved a relationship with a bat. By day, a Hardwicke’s woolly bat will climb inside the pitcher and rest. Instead of trying to digest the bat, the plant survives on the nutrients it can scavenge from the bat’s droppings.

This is not a passive relationship. The pitcher plants have evolved a way of attracting bats in the dense rain forest. The back wall of the plant is shaped like a dish and will reflect the echolocating bat’s calls. This allows the bat to detect a roosting spot easily.^[3]

7 Mammals Pollinating Plants

When we think of animals that pollinate plants, we most often think of bees and other insects which buzz from flower to flower spreading pollen. However, there are many species of plants which rely on mammals for reproduction.

To attract these mammals, plants must evolve quite different flowers than those which entice insects. The smells of mammal-pollinated flowers are not the delicate floral scents we usually think of. A mammal-attracting flower will often smell of cheese and yeast. These flowers are also more likely to point downward to scatter pollen on the mammals below as they try to feed from it.

It is not only herbivorous mammals that will be used as pollinators by plants. Sugarbushes attract carnivorous mongooses and genets. This benefits the plants because carnivores tend to have large territories and will spread the pollen further.^[4]

6 Amorphophallus titanum And Flies

Of course, not all insects are attracted to sweet foods. A flower attracts a certain type of insect by giving it what it wants. The Amorphophallus titanum has evolved to attract flies and carrion beetles, and so it produces a smell to lure them in. The perfume that the Amorphophallus titanum pumps into the jungle air has given the plant its alternative name—the corpse flower.

The flower of the Amorphophallus titanum is the largest on Earth. This is partly a response to its environment. In the lush jungles of Sumatra, a plant must produce a lot of its scent to have a chance of spreading it far enough to attract insects.

The huge structure of the flower also produces its own heat. This increases the reach of its rotting flesh aroma and makes it easier for flies to find the plant. Fortunately for those not fond of flowers that reek of decomposing bodies, the Amorphophallus titanum only blooms approximately once every six years.^[5]

5 Duroia hirsuta And Ants

The Amazon rain forest is famous for its biodiversity. Huge numbers of species of plants and animals live together in one of the richest ecosystems on the planet. And yet there are patches of the rain forest that seem to consist only of a single species of tree—the Duroia hirsuta.

The native peoples of the Amazon thought that these patches were created by evil demons, and so these areas were called Devil’s gardens. The Duroia hirsuta produces chemicals which inhibit the growth of other plants, but this is not enough to explain their dominance.

In fact, the demons which create these areas are an ant species. As we have seen with other ant–plant relationships, the ants will act as an army to defend their home.

Instead of just targeting other animals, the lemon ants that live on these trees will search the jungle floor for seedlings of other plants and poison them with their formic acid. This prevents other plants from stealing the light needed by the Duroia hirsuta.

In turn, this increases the size of the ants’ home. An ant colony in a Devil’s garden can grow to house thousands of queens and millions of ants.^[6]

4 Fig And Fig Wasp

It is perhaps no surprise to find that fig wasps live in fig trees. The fact that many figs contain the corpses of dead wasps may put you off eating them, though. The relationship between figs and fig wasps goes back at least 60 million years, so it is humans eating figs who are really intruding on a private affair.

The fig is not really a fruit but a hollow structure containing many flowers. As a fig develops, it produces a scent which attracts pregnant female fig wasps. To get inside the fig, the female must burrow in. This is a tough process which often tears off her wings and antennae.

Once inside, the wasp will deposit her eggs and the pollen she has carried from her home fig. Then she dies. If not pollinated, the fig will often wither and die, killing any eggs inside it. This is an evolutionary safeguard to ensure that wasps continue to bring it pollen.

If pollinated, the fig ripens, the wasp eggs hatch, and they feed on the flesh of the fig. Males and females will grow inside. The males gather pollen for the females and tunnel a hole out of the fig. Then they mate with the females and deliver their pollen before the female wasps escape to search out new figs—and the cycle continues.^[7]

3 Giant Ground Sloths And Avocados

Humans have a bit of a track record with driving species to extinction. Seeing the close relationship between species on this list, it is not hard to see how wiping out one species can harm other species. In the case of the giant ground sloths of South America, humans very nearly ended up destroying the avocado.

Seeds carried by animals tend to be sized appropriately to the creatures which carry them. The avocado’s huge seed required a suitably large animal to move it about. The giant ground sloths could grow to be up to 6 meters (20 ft) in length. Being big and hungry, they would eat avocados and then spread the avocado seeds through their bowel movements.

With the coming of humans to the Americas, many large mammals, including the giant ground sloths, were eradicated. Without the sloths to spread the avocado seeds, the plants had no way to colonize new areas, putting them at risk of following their sloths to extinction.^[8]

Thanks to humans cultivating avocados, the plant has survived and humans have stepped into the role of the sloth.

2 Mint-Sauce Worms And Algae

It is not so unusual for animals to live in plants. However, Symsagittifera roscoffensis is a worm that has evolved to have plants living in it. These mint-sauce worms never eat and instead get all their energy via the algae that live inside them.

The worms have no guts. So when they absorb the algae as juveniles, the algae are not digested. Instead, the tiny plants receive a safer home than they could expect floating free in the ocean. In return, they give the worms energy.

The worms live on beaches. When the tide is out, they rise to the surface to expose their symbiotic algae to sunlight. When the tide comes in, the worms retreat under the sand for safety. Whether the algae or the worms benefit more from this relationship is open to question, but many see mint-sauce worms as a true animal–plant partnership.^[9]

1 Plants That Call To Predators

We have seen plants that provide a home to insects to protect themselves from herbivores, but perhaps that relationship is a bit clingy. Some plants wait until they are under attack to call in animal helpers.

For example, when a tobacco plant is damaged by a caterpillar munching on its leaves, the plant releases volatile organic chemicals. These chemicals rapidly spread through the air.

The caterpillar may not notice this silent scream, but predatory insects do. They will descend on the caterpillar that is causing the damage and eat it. The plant benefits, the predators benefit, the caterpillar . . . not so much.

Perhaps the most vicious response to attack is one used by maize plants, among others. When under siege by caterpillars, these plants release a signal which attracts parasitic wasps. The wasps fall on the caterpillar, lay their eggs in it, and wait for the caterpillar to be eaten alive from the inside out.^[10]

Ben is a freelance writer, whose musings and ramblings can be followed on Twitter.

For much of history, homosexuality has been hidden away—if not in closets then in the privacy of people’s homes. Because of social stigma or cruel punishment, people were unable to live their lives openly. Yet history is littered with people who have formed strong same-sex relationships, whether sexual or not. It may be that some of these couples simply shared a friendship of such intensity that we today find it impossible to imagine it not being sexual.

10Marcela Gracia Ibeas & Elisa Sanchez Loriga

It is said that in 1061 two men were married by a priest in a small chapel in Spain. Little is known about the two men, Pedro Diaz and Muno Vandilaz, but a gay wedding, also in Spain, in 1901 is far better documented.

Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga met while training to be teachers. Their friendship was intense enough to cause concern as Marcela’s parents sent her away to complete her studies and to separate the pair. After their training, however, they were placed in neighboring rural parishes. Here, they began to live together.

Elisa took to presenting herself as a man and using the identity of a dead cousin, calling herself Mario. It was in this guise that the pair married on June 8, 1901. The secret of their marriage did not remain secret for long. The revelation that a same-sex couple had married was reported widely. They were sacked, excommunicated, and arrest warrants put out for the pair. They fled, first to Portugal and then to Argentina. In Argentina, Elisa, under a false name, married a man to set up a home where Marcela could live with her. This marriage was never consummated, and the husband discovered the pair’s identity.

In 1909, the press announced Elisa’s suicide. What happened to Marcela is not known. Their marriage to each other was never officially annulled.

9James I & George Villiers

When Queen Elizabeth died without an heir in 1603, the English crown passed to her relative James, King of Scotland. Since Elizabeth had been such a strong ruler, people joked that after the reign of King Elizabeth, it was now the reign of Queen James.

James seems to have had several favorite male courtiers throughout his life. When he was young, it was with the Earl of Lennox, who one observer reported “the Duke of Lennox went about to draw the King to carnal lust.” Others followed, but it was with George Villiers that James would make the most lasting relationship. As James openly told his Privy Council:

“You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham [James made Villiers Earl of Buckingham] more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”

Their relationship was certainly profitable to Villiers, who gained power, lands, titles, and wealth. It was not so to the realm. He mismanaged many things and came to be hated. After James’s death, Villiers was stabbed to death. But it seems he made the king happy. As James wrote in a private letter:

“Praying God that I may have a joyful and comfortable meeting with you, and that we may make at this Christenmass a new marriage, ever to be kept thereafter; for God so love me, as I desire only to live in this world for your sake, and that I had rather live banished in any part of the earth with you, then live a sorrowful widow-life without you.”

8Pan Zhang & Wang Zhongxian

Wang Zhongxian was the ruler of Chu, a feudal state in modern China, sometime in the fourth or third century BC. Hearing of a beautiful young scholar called Pan Zhang, the ruler asked for copies of his writings. The two met and are said to have fallen immediately in love with each other.

The pair lived the rest of their lives together. They were described as being as close as husband and wife, sharing the same bed and blanket and “unbounded intimacy.” The two lovers died at the same time and were buried together on the Mount Luofu. Here, a tree was planted on their grave. As it grew, the branches and twigs came to join and merge together, which people saw as an embrace. Seeing this as a representation of Pan Zhang and Wang Zhongxian’s love, the locals called this the “Shared Pillow Tree.”

7James Buchanan & William Rufus King

When future president James Buchanan was a young man, he became engaged to the rich and attractive Anne Coleman. She broke off the engagement, and Buchanan never did marry. He did, however, enter into a relationship with Senator William Rufus King.

The two politicians shared a home in Washington for 10 years. For two bachelors, this may seem to be just a money-saving act of prudence. However, the two were closer than simple housemates. President Jackson colorfully referred to them as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy.”

When the two were separated because King went to France to serve as the United States ambassador, Buchanan wrote to a friend:

“I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them . . . [I] should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”

6Queen Anne & Sarah Churchill

Queen Anne was never supposed to be a queen. She was the younger daughter of a king who had two sons. However, the crown did fall to her, and when she came to the throne, she brought with her the great friend of her youth, Sarah Churchill.

Sarah and Anne had served together as ladies in waiting to the old Queen and developed the nicknames “Mrs Morley” (Anne) and “Mrs Freeman” (Sarah) for each other. Anne found Sarah was willing to speak bluntly to her and adored her frankness. Once Queen, she made Sarah’s husband a duke, and Sarah herself received several positions at court.

However, Sarah overstepped her mark. Queen Anne found her frankness irritating now. Sarah once told the Queen in public to “be quiet.” Things worsened when Sarah found that Anne was spending long periods alone with a younger woman—her own relative Abigail Masham. Soon, rumors abounded about the “Dark Deeds at Night” that the young Masham provided to the Queen. Sarah was fired from all her positions and left the country, only returning after Anne’s death.

5David & Jonathan

Oscar Wilde said, “‘The Love that dare not speak its name’ in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan . . . It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.” He said this in a trial related to his alleged homosexuality. Is there any evidence in the Bible of a same-sex relationship between King David and Jonathan?

After David has slain Goliath, he takes the head to King Saul. When the king’s son Jonathan meets David. the pair form a bond. 1 Samuel 18:1 says “Jonathan became one in spirit with David and he loved him as himself.” The two exchange clothes and weapons and make a ‘covenant.’

King Saul becomes jealous of David. Jonathan helps David escape his father. As the two part, “David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most.” Jonathan is later killed in battle and David grieves for him. “Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.”

4Emperor Ai Of Han

Emperor Ai ruled Han from 7–1 BC. Ai fell in love with a young retainer, Dong Xian, at court and would bequeath one of the most charming stories and phrases to history. Unfortunately, Ai’s desire for Dong would be the ruin of his beloved.

It is said that as soon as they saw each other, the Emperor was smitten. He showered his favorite with ever more titles. When a stranger at a feast marveled at such a young man having such power, the Emperor claimed that Dong was a sage. Those close to the Emperor told him that the state was being ruined on account of Dong, but the Emperor would do nothing.

It is said that once Dong fell asleep on the Emperor’s arm, not wanting to disturb his lover, the Emperor cut his sleeve off. This led to the phrase “passion of the cut sleeve” as a euphemism for homosexuality in Chinese.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his fondness for Dong, Ai died without having produced an heir. On his death bed, he left the state to Dong Xian. This proved fatal for Dong, as he was soon relieved of all offices and banned from the palace. He committed suicide soon afterward.

3The Ladies Of Llangollen

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby came from the English aristocracy in Ireland. They met in 1768 and began a secret and intense correspondence. In 1778, the pair fled their families to avoid arranged marriages or being forced into a convent. The two ladies slept rough in barns in their attempt to reach a boat for England.

This attempt failed. They were discovered and taken to their separate homes and banned from seeing each other. Only their obstinacy prevented them being parted forever. When their families saw there was no alternative, Eleanor and Sarah were allowed to leave. They moved to Wales and set up a retreat in Llangollen. There, despite their efforts to be private, they soon became “the two most celebrated virgins in Europe.” All the great celebrities of the day either visited them or wrote to them.

For 50 years, the two lived contentedly in their splendid isolation, kept company by a loyal housekeeper and visitors. Today, their home is a museum.

2Hadrian & Antinous

Homosexuality in the ancient world was not as universally approved of as some people would seem to believe. It was seen as unmanly for a male citizen to have too strong an infatuation with anyone, male or female, and disgraceful for a man to play the passive role in a homosexual relationship. Of course, rules are somewhat laxer when you are an emperor.

Hadrian discovered what many believe to have been the love of his life, Antinous, when the other was a boy. He took the handsome boy with him everywhere, leaving his wife at home. Hadrian was a restless administrator and traveled across the empire. It was while visiting Egypt that tragedy struck. Antinous mysteriously drowned in the Nile. Hadrian was beside himself with grief.

On the spot where he drowned, Hadrian constructed a new city, Antinopolis. He created a cult for the worship of the young man. Busts and statues of Antinous were raised throughout the empire. His face is one of the most recognizable from the ancient world, and copies of his image have been found from the corners of the empire.

1The Tyrannicides Of Athens

Upper-class Ancient Athenians tolerated a form of pedophilia that is shocking to us today. It was common for an older man to take a boy as his lover and introduce him into society. It was to be this practice which would give the Athenians their democracy, however.

Athens had tried democracy before but had fallen under the power of Hipparchus’s family. Hipparchus used his political position to try to force the pretty young boy Harmodius into being his lover. This upset not only the boy but his existing older lover Aristogeiton. The two lovers plotted together and at a religious sacrifice assassinated Hipparchus.

Hipparchus’s brother took sole control of the city and had the tyrannicides put to death. But when this last tyrant fell, Harmodius and Aristogeiton became symbols for Athens’s renewed democracy. A statue of the lovers was erected as a monument to freedom.

The course of love and sex is rarely smooth. In fiction, we like to present romance and marriage as a relationship that is universal between lovers, but in real life, every couple is different.

For many famous couples from our history, their most personal relationships were filled with social taboos and secrets only made public long after they were dead and gone. For many of these people, love and sex with one person just wasn’t enough. Here are ten of history’s most interesting nonmonogamous relationships.

10 The Marstons And Byrne
The Creators Of Wonder Woman

William M. Marston was an American psychologist and a major contributor to an early prototype of the modern lie detector. Marston was far better known by his pen name, however: Charles Moulton, the comic book writer who created Wonder Woman in the 1940s. His authorship of the character was kept secret and caused much shock when the truth finally came to light. But he didn’t come up with Wonder Woman on his own. William Marston’s legal wife was Elizabeth Marston, affectionately nicknamed “Sadie.” If there was one thing husband and wife (pictured above) had in common, it was their jack-of-all-trades nature. They collaborated for several of his psychology reports, and Elizabeth worked many jobs throughout her lifetime, from traveling soap saleswoman to the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Elizabeth was also the person who came up with the idea for a female superhero, and it’s widely suspected that Wonder Woman was largely based on her.

They had a relatively normal, monogamous relationship until Olive Byrne walked into their lives. Olive Byrne was 11 years their junior when they met. Olive was a senior at Tufts University, going by the name Olive Richards for her psychology reviews and interviews. In time, Olive would drop out of her psychology program, move in with the Marstons, and commit full-time as a homemaker for their four children, two of them being Olive’s and two of them being Elizabeth’s. Her influence is less explicit, but there are hints that William also based many of Wonder Woman’s traits on Olive as well. When Olive “married” William, she wore two wide bracelets on each wrist in place of wedding rings, not unlike a certain Amazonian princess.^[1]

Their three-person relationship would last until William’s death, after which Elizabeth and Olive lived the rest of their lives together.

9 Anais Nin
The Finest Female Erotic Writer

Anais was a Cuban-American writer who was best known for her diaries, which provided insight into her personal life and her acquaintances with many famous figures of her time. Anais was also one of the first successful female erotic writers in the 1970s, her fascination with the erotic likely stemming from her unhealthy relationship with her own sexuality. Anais was raised in a Roman Catholic family but left the Church and school at age 16. Her estranged father, Joaquin Nin, sexually abused her when she was a child, which Anais detailed in her book/diary Incest: From a Journal with Love.

Her unstable relationship with sex and relationships was a factor in Anais’s tendency to cheat on several of her husbands. Rupert Pole and Hugh Guiler were two of her spouses, but unlike her other marriages, Anais went a step further with these two. Anais was legally married to both of them at the same time.

Anais married Guiler, a banker who financially supported her and tolerated her many acts of infidelity throughout their marriage, first. Anais would meet Pole, an American actor, in an elevator while on the way to a party, and she was immediately drawn to his handsome features and the depth of his intellect and sensitivity. This would lead Anais to juggle both relationships for several decades, without either man knowing about the other. Lies built upon lies, which Anais referred to as her “trapeze.” Her relationship with Pole became far more serious than any of her affairs when she married him in 1955. Eventually, however, fearing legal repercussions, Anais invalidated her marriage to Pole but still stayed with him throughout her twilight years.

When she died of cervical cancer in 1977, it is said by a friend of hers named Tristine Rainer that Anais finally confessed her infidelity. Both husbands forgave her and met years later “on a friendly basis, or a mutual husband basis.” Although Pole admitted to some jealousy, he still honored Guiler’s wishes to spread his ashes close to where he had spread Anais’s ashes eight years earlier.^[2]

8 Beauvoir And Sartre
The Swinging French Philosophers

Simone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher who was best known for her feminist treatise, The Second Sex, and her relationship to Jean-Paul Sartre, a famous playwright and political activist. Their relationship broke several social rules for what was considered a proper romantic relationship at the time. Simone and Jean-Paul were partners (although never legally married) and were both free to pursue outside lovers at their leisure. This was Sartre’s idea, saying, “What we have is an essential love; but it is a good idea for us also to experience contingent love affairs.” Beauvoir, to his surprise, agreed wholeheartedly. She wrote about the agreement, “We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.”

The only rule they both had to uphold was communication. They could never lie to each other.

They both had several lovers. Beauvoir, in particular, had a fling with American author Nelson Algren, to whom she wrote dozens of letters. There was also Beauvoir’s bisexuality, which led Sartre and her to share several of his partners. This wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, however, as a few of her female students accused her of sexual exploitation. This eventually cost Beauvoir her teaching license. When Sartre died in 1980, she published A Farewell to Sartre along with several of their (edited) letters. But Beauvoir is reported to have said that her relationship with Sartre was her “greatest achievement in life.”^[3]

7 Joseph Needham, Dorothy Moyle, And Lu Gwei-djen
The Biochemists

Joseph Needham, Dorothy Moyle, and Lu Gwei-djen were a trio of biochemists who studied the history of Chinese science and technology. Needham and Moyle were married first and worked together as fellows of the Royal Society. Needham was described as a friendly, active man with a keenness for pretty women.^[4] Moyle, Needham, and an international team of experts collaborated on Science and Civilisation in China, one of the first series of books to praise China’s contributions to studies such as cartography and mineralogy. While working on this, Needham met and fell in love with Lu Gwei-djen, a biochemist and historian from China who was co-authoring the project.

Although there is no evidence that Moyle and Gwei-djen shared any romantic attraction, Moyle accepted Needham and Gwei-djen’s love without complaint. They lived together even after the project ended. When Moyle died in 1987, Needham and Gwei-djen married two years later. Unfortunately, their marriage would only last two years until Gwei-djen also died. Not to be separated for long, Needham died four years later.

6 The Roosevelts
Affairs In The White House

First Lady Eleanor and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt were nonconformists both in politics and the standards for a conventional marriage in their time. Over the years, their marriage shifted into an open relationship. Unfortunately, this development occurred with plenty of unhappy incidents. Franklin’s public affair with his secretary Lucy Mercer and Eleanor’s lack of motherly instincts caused many family traumas for them and their children.

Regardless of their faults, their marriage lasted 40 years until Franklin’s death in 1945. They resolved to give each other space to pursue other romantic relationships, according to the letters they sent several of their known acquaintances. Eleanor was rumored to have been in a relationship with Lorena Hickok, an openly gay journalist who would inspire Eleanor to hold her famous news conferences with solely female reporters to give them easier entry into the journalistic field. Eleanor wrote to Hickok nearly 20 times a day, and in many letters, Eleanor expressed much fondness for her. Eleanor was even given a sapphire ring from Hickok, which she was seen wearing at Franklin’s inauguration. This was one of several rumored relationships that either of Roosevelts partook in. There was also Eleanor’s bodyguard, Earl Miller, and Franklin’s secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand.^[5]

Biographer Jean-Edward Smith writes about the arrangement, “Remarkably, both ER and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged the arrangement. [ . . . ] Eleanor and Franklin were strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other’s happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it.”

5 Rock Hudson And Phyllis Gates
In The Closet In The 1950s

The story of Rock Hudson and Phyllis Gates’s three-year marriage has a lot of “he said, she said.” Hudson was a famous Hollywood leading man in the 1950s. He was also gay, a fact which he and his agent, Henry Willson, did their best to hide. Phyllis Gates is a person with two stories. She said that when she was Willson’s secretary, he introduced her to Hudson, and she fell in love with the actor. With several gossip magazines questioning why Hudson wasn’t married, Hudson and Gates quickly began a romantic relationship that became a short and unhappy marriage. According to Gates, Hudson was frequently off filming movies and having affairs with men, expressed disdain at having sex with her, and even physically abused her until she finally filed for divorce. That’s her side of the story, which she went so far as to publish in her memoir, My Husband, Rock Hudson.

According to many Hollywood acquaintances, actor Mark Miller in particular, Gates was far from an innocent starlet who was duped into being a gay man’s beard. Gates was a lesbian who knew from the very beginning that Hudson was gay. She met him at a party on the Hollywood gay scene. Hudson’s friends said Gates married him for money, fame, and “fun.” Miller said of their relationship, “Phyllis had a double standard. That is: She could go out with women, but Hudson couldn’t make it with men . . . ”

Hudson died from AIDS-related complications in 1985, one of the first of many famous men to be taken by the disease. Decades earlier, one of Hudson’s boyfriends was Lee Garlington, a background actor at the time. They didn’t last, but on the actor’s deathbed, Hudson confessed that there were only two people that he truly loved: his mother and one other person. Gates’s memoir stated that she was the other person. Hudson’s biography stated that it was Garlington.^[6]

4 Marlene Dietrich And Rudolf Sieber
The Glamorous And The Forgotten

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress whose claim to fame was her androgynous fashion sense and glamorous lifestyle. She began her career in silent films in the 1920s and continued to shape her persona to fit the changing styles of several passing decades until the 1970s. Her personal life involved an incomprehensible number of affairs. And they were affairs because, although her husband was seldom mentioned, Dietrich was married. She was married to assistant director Rudolf Sieber, a man forgotten by all but one.

Dietrich’s many lovers [both men and women] were never something she felt the need to hide from her husband. In fact, Seiber would often receive the love letters from Dietrich’s lovers, filled with sarcastic comments from his wife. Some of her lovers reportedly included Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra, Mercedes de Acosta, and John F. Kennedy.

None of this reportedly bothered Sieber. He only gave one interview in his life, and when asked about his wife’s affairs, he said, “Of course she has been rumored in love with this one and that one. She is a glamorous woman, and a glamorous woman is supposed to be surrounded by romance at all times.” Sieber even had a few affairs himself. His mistress Tamara Matul was an old friend of Dietrich. And even though Dietrich rarely spoke about her husband, their love was true. She rushed back home when he struck with a heart attack and nursed him through a fierce bout of pneumonia. She spoke up about him a few times, particularly in anger when rumors of divorce circulated. Dietrich proclaimed, “You do not consider the possibility that love might have something to do with our marriage! I consider Mr. Sieber the perfect husband and father.”^[7]

3 Cole Porter And Linda Lee Thomas

Another active member of vintage Hollywood gay scene, Cole Porter was an American songwriter and composer of predominantly musical theater. Porter married Linda Lee Thomas, who was 13 years older than Porter, in 1919. Porter was homosexual, a fact of which Linda was well aware.

Linda, already a socialite due to her family history, allowed Porter to access high society social circles that would fuel Porter’s bohemian and debauched lifestyle. They lived apart. Porter threw lavish parties to entertain male lovers such as Jack Cassidy and Ray Kelly (a person to whom Porter was so close that his children continue to receive Porter’s song royalties to this day). Porter’s taste for men was obvious to all.^[8]

Linda Lee Thomas was much more subtle. There was speculation that Linda was a lesbian or asexual, so although she had affairs of her own, whether they involved men, women, or sex is unclear. Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas’s marriage was sexless but not necessarily without love. Linda was considering divorce when Porter had a horse-riding accident that left him permanently crippled in 1937, and she stayed with Porter until her death in 1954. Porter was devastated and slowly isolated himself until his death in 1964.

2 John Humphrey Noyes
The Oneida Community

John H. Noyes was an American preacher and utopian socialist who founded a religious commune called the Oneida Community in 1848. The Oneida Community, established on religious philosophies, practiced an array of controversial sexual and social practices within its 300-person population.^[9]

The community practiced “complex marriage” (a term coined by Noyes), which is a marriage-like relationship between more than two people, and communal ownership of all possessions. To control the population, they instructed men not to ejaculate inside their partners as a form of birth control, which turned out to be surprisingly effective. They gave women social freedoms they could get nowhere else, such as the ability to take part in community work, wear functional clothing, and a choice on whether they raised any children.

The stirpiculture that Oneida practiced had its pros and cons. Children, what few they had, were raised by committees, and although parents could visit, they would be separated for some time if the jurisdiction felt that their relationship was too affectionate. Mutual criticism mandated that all members could be “tried” a by a committee to eliminate “undesirable character traits.” Most of those tried accepted their “sentence” humbly and often took steps to fix whatever wrong they had committed without complaint.

Noyes was highly respected by his followers, so his opinions were held to high esteem. When Noyes had to leave for fear of being arrested, Oneida soon dissolved, but many of its citizens remained loyal followers who would write to him for advice until his death in 1886.

1 Alfred Kinsey And Clara McMillen
The Parents Of The Sexual Revolution

Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist and sexologist, most famously known for his research on human sexuality. His work caused mass controversy in the 1940s and 1950s, but today, his reports and the Kinsey scale/Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale are praised for being the foundation of modern sexology and for their effects on modern values and the sexual revolution.

However, although all his work bears his name alone, he had a partner in his wife Clara McMillen. (McMillen’s nickname from Kinsey was “Mac,” and her nickname for him was “Prok.”) Kinsey was both bisexual and polyamorous, a fact that aligns with his fascination with human sexuality. Clara was a biologist and sexologist in all but title, and she gladly shared an open relationship with Kinsey throughout their marriage. Both of them slept with other people and even partook in orgies in which McMillen would reportedly serve persimmon pies during breaks.^[10]

The two of them still had a sexual relationship with each other, siring four children. Alfred’s attempts to justify his own sexual habits (which went against what was deemed acceptable in his time) was done through cold, calculated science. He was the first person in his field to defend homosexuality on the basis of it being normal. His biography, written by James H. Jones, ends with this statement: “He was a pioneer, an explorer who blazed the trail for those who followed. It was he who convinced most Americans that human sexual behavior could and should be studied scientifically and, just as important, that scientific data should help inform discussions of social policy.” It is a shame that his wife remains largely forgotten in her contributions.

Savannah O. Skinner is a freelance writer and fiction author under the pen name S.O. Skinner.