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This is a bad post. Polyamory is NOT about sex and it’s NOT a fetish.
It can work extremely well and be extremely loving if done correctly. The problem is, it’s not as easy as people often think it is when trying to idealize it.
Communication is extremely important in every relationship and that only multiplies when you have more than one partner.
If you have a feeling of jealousy… Talk about it…
If you don’t think your partner is spending enough time with you… Talk about it…
If you aren’t enjoying sex with your partner… TALK ABOUT IT!
I’ve been with my fiancé for almost 4 years, my bf and I are celebrating our 1 year next month, and I have a new first date next Wednesday. My fiancé has even been with their nesting partner (who is monogamous) for 8 years now.
This all happened because we have clear ground rules and boundaries as well as active communication.
I’ve never felt more loved than when my fiancé helped me pick out my outfit for my first date with my bf.
I love them both so tremendously and it pisses me off when people tell me that isn’t possible or that all I care about is sex.
I think there are an unfortunate number of monogamous people who decide to try polyamory to fix or hold on to a dying relationship. It’s not a surprise that that often goes extremely poorly. It’s not for everyone and it’s not gonna fix any problems.
I’ve dated a couple of people who are poly, and while I’d always been in monogamous relationships, I was open to the idea. I don’t think love is a finite resource, and I’m not a jealous person at all, and it turns out, it doesn’t bother me at all. I also stay well away from anyone who thrives on drama, so all involved were very honest and adult about the whole thing. I wasn’t in a good headspace for any relationship at the time, so it didn’t work, but I’d absolutely be willing to try it again.
It’s really awesome that you noticed your own needs and put those first. That’s really awesome and I’m proud of you for doing so.
My nesting partner and I do not have a sexual relationship anymore, and that’s totally fine. We’re still in love and enjoy spending lots of time together. Polyamory is not about sex. I have other sexual partners sometimes, and that’s fine. My NP also has a girlfriend who she doesn’t have sex with either, and they get along like gangbusters.
Exactly! Sex is completely unrelated to the process as a whole.
It’s gross how often people think that being in love is just to have someone to fuck.
For a lot of people partnerships, cohabitation, and sex are ALL conflated into one big, messy thing. For a lot of men there’s an amount of ownership in there too.
I posed it as a question for a reason. I can say every poly relationship I have known has ended in flames, but I’m open to all opinions.
But there is no question some people should just get divorced.
I can say every poly relationship I have known has ended in flames
I strongly dislike this trope. Most monogamous relationships also end badly. Relationships are hard.
Well they have is all I can say. Two of them ended particularly badly when the person in them who encouraged the poly relationship up and left the person they invited to be poly. My one friend ended up suddenly homeless when her poly couple threw her out after she had moved across country to be with them, and another who had been encouraged by his wife to practice being poly ended up having said wife vacate the premises while he was away for a weekend and empty their bank account and change her number and vanish. Like it was pretty bad.
Right, but you surely have also seen many monogamous relationships also end badly.
Both of those examples could easily have happened with monogamy.
I could rattle off a bunch of poly relationships that have gone well. I know some folks that are raising a kid. They both have other partners. They’re all pretty happy. Been so for years
Another couple has also been together for years. The one of them has had other relationships for years while the other focused on her career. For the last year or two she’s got more time and is exploring dating. She’s having a blast. They’re all very happy.
There’s a friend I’ve known for years that’s done poly the whole time. He’s had some breakups over the years, but that’s just normal relationship stuff. None of them were to my knowledge catastrophic.
I can also rattle off monogamous relationships that went badly.
It’s absurd to be like “monogamous relationships sometimes end badly. Poly relationships sometimes end badly. The poly ones are due to poly.”
Mah people represent 🥹
If people want to practice polyamory I suppose that’s their business. I personally have known a lot of people who turned their lives upside down to be in polyamorous relationships and they generally always fall apart over jealousy. One person always ends up feeling left out usually.
If you want that and you can make it work though then more power to you!
Also if sex is all there is holding your relationship together you are fucked
Literally!
I guarantee you know more monogamous people who have lost their relationships to jealousy.
This isn’t a polyamory issue
I think it’s different for bi people maybe, but I can say everyone i know who has done it has broken up.
I had a roommate who was bi and he moved like 4 states away to be in a poly relationship with like 5 other people and he moved into their house with them and everything. I saw an update from him that they had broken up and he was moving again like 3 months after that! It honestly just sounds exhausting
That’s not a poly problem, it is a possibility in any long distance relationship.
That sounds…gross.
My friend moved to be part of a throuple across the country, with a husband and wife couple, and in two months he had kicked my friend out when she had nowhere to go.
Me and my two boyfriends are bisexual. We have been on a long distance relationship for almost 2 years and there never was a issue with jealousy between us. We are a family. We love each other and all we want is to stay with each other.
I’ve been with my wife for 5 years and have been poly from the start. My gf and I have been together for nearly as long and her and my wife get along as do I and her husband
Out of curiosity, since they way you put it it’s “the three of us” which sound beautiful: How would you (meaning two of you) handle it if one of the others wanted to break out? I mean, break-ups happen, so I’m just wondering if you’ve ever thought about how you would handle being the “only two left” in that kind of scenario?
Sincerely, I’ve never thought much about it. It doesn’t seem like something that would happen to us.
But I have two friends who are a couple and have tried adding a third person to the relationship, but after some time this person ended breaking up with both of them. It was sad as any break up would be, but the two are still together.
It sounds like you might be a women from context, given you stated you are bi and have two boyfriends do you ever feel like you’re missing out on not having a girlfriend to fill in that need?
There is no “need” to be filled. Having a girlfriend could be nice, but never during our time together I felt like I was missing out.
I’ve been poly for 5ish years now and never had an issue. I’m engaged and I also have an amazing bf. It’s a lot of work but… It’s amazingly worth it when it works. I love my partners so much and I’m glad they have other people around them that can make them as happy as they can be.
There’s also asexuality. Love your partner but don’t wanna fuck 'em? Get a divorce you deviant! Because apparently sex is required for a happy marriage and if you don’t have sex because you’re not interested in it, then you’re obviously a pervert or a prude who deserves to be unloved.
Unless you’re both asexual, or are open to the sexual one fucking around, you probably should get a divorce though
Unless you’re both asexual, or are open to the sexual one fucking around,
Yeah, but then you get back to the person in OP’s post telling people to get a divorce regardless. My point is that you can have a happy marriage and be poly and/or ace.
Edit: Also, I’d think that issue would come up long before marriage and would likely be solved by that point.
I think there is another side to that though that the non-asexual partner is probably often not very happy.
Ironically this is one of those things that’s easier to deal with in a poly context - your partner isn’t your one and only so if they’re ace and you’re not, you’re allowed to get those needs met elsewhere and still have a loving romantic relationship with them.
Are you disregarding your partner’s needs here?
One would hope that you’d solve issues like that before getting married. Whether that means an open marriage, having a partner who’s also ace, finding ways to fulfill your partners needs without having sex yourself, etc.
You’re not wrong, but I think most married couples that involve someone who’s ace would have that problem solved by the time they get to marriage.
Yeah.
I think “love your partner, but don’t wanna fuck 'em” implies you’ve already failed in this regard.
Why isn’t the partner doing the same in that situation?
There is a real phenomenon where many people try polyamory before they accept that their original relationship should end, then go back to just being single or start a different monogamous relationship.
This “transitional” polyamory is often looked down on but I think it’s another honest attempt to deal with the pressures and problems of expected monogamy.
My friend did it. Initially it was because her SO became basically asexual and she was trying to make it work while also meeting her own needs, and she ended up leaving him for her polyamorous partner and they got married and have been together for ages and had a baby. Sometimes the way on is the way out I guess.
And this is exactly why obsessive
polygamymonogamy is actually pretty toxic when you think about it. This kind of experience could also reasonably lead back to your partner, along with a renewed sense of dedication, if such a lapse of judgement was tolerated the way basically every other misstep in a marriage or serious relationship is tolerated.I see couples forgive way worse shit than a bit of meaningless infidelity on a routine basis.
I’m not sure what you mean by obsessive polygamy.
Do you mean people who feel strongly about having multiple wives or husbands? People who have many previous marriages? People who obsessively collect spouses? 😄
No I am a fucking idiot. I meant obsessive monogamy.
Shitting on Poly people seems still fashionable.
I think I understand why people hate on them. First, cheaters in monogamous relationships. What people don’t realize is that there are cheaters in Poly relationships to. It’s actually a ton of extra work making sure everyone and their wishes are respected.
Second, religious fundamentalists. People think of Mormons mostly when thinking of Poly people. Misogyny, religous indoctrination, all the worst shit you can think of. Not all Poly people are religious you know.
Polyamorus people deserve marriage equality. They deserve to love the way they want.
I think a lot of people have the experience of dating someone who does not reveal they are poly until it is too “late.” I have a friend who is constantly meeting people and then learning that they already have a boyfriend, which is extremely frustrating.
My ex husband also decided that he wanted to be poly. I was okay with it (I had no interest in pursuing other relationships myself) - but then he decided to throw our marriage away so he could chase legal teens half our age…
The worst part is that you are supposed to feel “compersion” or something. It wasn’t enough to let my husband fuck teenagers, I had to be happy about it. It made me feel absolutely horrible and devastated my self esteem.
The poly lifestyle also sort of encourages you to view relationships as means to an end and disposable. You see this person for your sex needs, this person for your emotional needs and so on. It’s not a lifetime partnership.
Relationships are a lot of hard work. I don’t get where people get the time to do that with multiple partners.
Ive seen about 5 open marriage relationships first hand as part of my social circle, and maybe another 10 open dating relationships in the same expanded social circle. All hetero relationships, and I’d say slightly more than half of them were initiate by the woman. All “progressive” / non-religious poly.
This has been about a 15 year period, and every single one of those relationships at this point is over, or on deaths door.
My closest friend at one point was one of those, and I watched him slowly get more and more depressed over 6-8 months before opening up to me about it. He was critical of me passing judgement on poly relationships until I told him “OTHER people are capable of poly relationships. YOU are not.” And that’s really my only criticism to poly stuff. It is possible to be two well adjusted people participating in a long term mutually consensual polyamorus relationship. But those are about as common as rolling a natural 20 in the sample set of poly relationships. The rest are just headed for the garbage and at least one person in the relationship already knows it.
Real Polyamorus deserve marriage equality and to love the way they want. Most of the others are just virtue signaling and wearing it like a fashion statement, which is why they get made fun of.
Hating Mormons for polyamory is like hating Hitler for being vegan.
I have nothing against practical monogamy save for this. You must free the ones you love before they can freely choose you.
It’s why insisting on lifetime guarantees of sole-possession is the worst possible way to soothe your jealousy or fear of abandonment.
If you can’t let go of that fear long enough to put someone else’s happiness first, it doesn’t matter how many oaths, contracts or incentives you use to fortify your conquest. You will never know what real trust feels like.
(Pre-edit: this became much longer than intended. You struck a chord in me it seems.)
You’ve articulated this so very well. It’s a lesson that took me many years to learn and comes with the prerequisite of respecting yourself and respecting your partner to such a degree that the relationship comes second for both of you. Each person’s first priority should be themselves. Both parties need to respect that to the point of accepting that staying together is not a given and is contingent on both parties being fully satisfied with the direction your lives together is heading.
The funny thing is that I’ve never felt more confident in my relationship since learning that. I used to think that’s putting the relationship second to yourself is antithetical to commitment but actually it’s the other way around. The only way to fully commit to a relationship is to make sure that maintaining it is a concious choice rather than an expectation or given.
The way my dad illustrated this lesson in my youth (and I took the advice but only recently learned the full meaning of it) is like this: life is a journey down a road with many crossroads. Should you find a partner, you walk together. If you hit a crossroad and can’t agree on a direction then thank each other for the lovely journey together but let them follow their own path. Find that partner that is going to the same destination and you’ll have found happiness in love.
I like that analogy. Is the blessing of a traveling companion measured by miles shared? Of course not. They had and will have their own adventures apart from yours. Pretending otherwise is just immature, but demanding otherwise is selfish.
Yet many do. “Me or no one” exclusivity under “till death” contracts are considered normal. The coercive nature of these relationship parameters are rarely considered, and neither is their cost, many of which relate to consent.
This is where I usually get pushback so I’ll explain. For simplicity, consider the typical (sexual) consent scenario, where Alice gives Bob consent but withdraws it later. Can Bob retain her consent by getting her to sign a written contract? No. But what if the contract just prevented her from leaving? Again, no. But what if the contract specified an incentive she forfeits by leaving? Legal, but no. But what if the contract made him her only option without forfeiture? Again, legal, but no.
Perhaps, having signed such a contract, Alice might acquiesce, and may even be enthusiastic at times. But sadly, Bob just put a lot of effort into making it difficult for him to ever know for sure, because “to have and to hold” Alice was more important to him than her freedom and happiness.
This is why I insist on relationships that are explicitly open from the start. It’s not important to me to have multiple partners, but it is absolutely essential to me to be chosen freely. Not in exchange for anything. Not to fulfill a promise, duty, or obligation. Simply their current preference and desire. The result is I can be certain in each moment that my partners want me for me. Not my status or money or security I provide. Just me. And my life is so much better for it, because that kind of trust is precious and, apparently, quite rare.
Thank you for posting this. I’m on something of a journey myself, and needed this advice.
Sounds like someone who is offended people live a lifestyle other then their preferred one and I feel it’s best to just ignore this person.
That’s exactly what this sounds like, or maybe someone who doesn’t know what their book is about
Yep. And I’m not even poly. It would never work for me. But I’m not gonna be bitchy to other people because I don’t live their lifestyle. This is exactly the same as telling gay people to just go fuck a person of the opposite gender.
Maybe. If you don’t want to fuck anyone you should probably get depression treatment before a divorce. If you want to fuck someone new and not your wife then divorce. If you want both, nonmonogamy may be for you, but polyamory involves far less sex than you hope.
Hmm that’s interesting. I thought it was mostly sexual.
There are people like that. You hear about their new partners all the time and see them constantly looking for new partners. That’s not because poly is like that, but because these are the same people who would be serially monogamous if they wanted monogamy.
For me, monogamy just felt too restrictive. My wife and I both broke up with people who wanted monogamy not long before meeting and have always been poly. As a 22 year old I loved the idea of sex, but nearing 30 I love that I can have multiple happy and long term relationships. I love the fact that I could fall in love with someone new without risking losing my wife who I love dearly and cherish. And yeah I’ve been in two happy relationships for about 5 years now. And both my partners like each other and I like my girlfriend’s husband
for a lot of people in long term polyamory, it’s about intimacy, which sex is part of. even if you have relationships that are primarily about fun sexy times, you’re probably going to do a lot of scheduling to maintain those relationships, or find new ones.
And today you learned you thought wrong.
You may be thinking of “swinging” or some other variant of non monogamy.
The old saw is that its mostly scheduling and deconflicting
Don’t worry it’s just like when furries say it’s not sexual
Like OK we’ll nod and smile and maybe they’re the golden case but everyone else is sex obsessed - poly community drama is always about sex.
This is such a wild statement. Guess I have news to the ace poly people I know.
Don’t worry they know, they’ll give you the official sanitized lines of course but they’ll be thinking ‘yep it do be like that’
You have no clue what you’re talking about
Sure, if that makes you feel better…
My opinion is fuck people like this that want you to conform to their standards of what a relationship is.
If you can have a happy and healthy relationship with someone without having sex with them? That awesome and you don’t have to give a single shit what losers like the OOP think about you.
Asexual people and relationships exist
Also what does lack of sex have to do with polyamory?
They weren’t implying a lack of sexual desire altogether. They were implying someone who was no longer attracted to their spouse but wanted to have sex with other people instead would just call themselves poly instead of getting a divorce…
Like how all those cishet guys go through years of emotional and hormone therapy, multiple surgeries, etc, so they can perv out in the women’s restroom by calling themselves trans. Obviously /s
Love is not the same as sex. Heinlein said it well with “the more someone loves, the more they CAN love”.
Different people can fill different needs. As long as all people involved are in agreement, then it’s nobody else’s business.
Mrs Grundy can take a hike off a cliff.
What if I want to fuck my wife and another woman or man at the same time?
Life’s about goals friend!
Wonder if the poster took the moment to consider the millions of folks out there who physically can’t have sex anymore due to circumstances outside their control when they wrote this 🤔
This doesn’t make sense. Is it supposed to say “a book about monogamy”? That would make a little more sense.
Edit: fix stupid phone autocorrect
I think it’s referrencing monogamous folks trying to save an obviously dead relationship with poly
Removed by mod
I am the type of person who cannot separate sexual relationships from romantic relationships. I used to think the same way you about open/poly relationshios and also “friends with benefits”. Every time I’d seen one they ended badly with someone, like me, “catching feelings” and someone getting hurt.
However, I recently found out that a couple in my friend group has an open marriage. They attend parties together and very much appear to be a loving couple like any other and, I believe, they are. They just also date and have sex with other people sometimes.
I think it isn’t for everyone. I also think that often someone is dissatisfied in a relationship and they think they can make it work with a third or open relationship… and it doesn’t work out. But I’m convinced that for some people it absolutely works.
