Human history is full of people who have killed themselves out of loneliness. Being deprived of intimacy can be extremely emotionally damaging.
I said that the two are separate. I said that I wouldn’t freak out over the sex, but that the lying would be the greater issue. I realize I’m probably not explaining myself clearly and that my post was sort of tangential from the OP. If I was in a monogamous relationship and found out my partner cheated, then I would be upset that he lied. The fact that he succumbed to fairly normal desire have sex with more than one person is of lesser concern. I don’t think I would be jealous of the other woman, I would just be upset that he thinks so little of me that he chooses to lie to me. The fact that I’m not the only woman that my man is attracted to would not be such a shock to me.
No disagreement here. Lying about anything is pretty bad. If we had a strong bond, then he shouldn’t be afraid to be honest about anything.
I think this is where I veered to far from the OP in talking about open relationships as opposed to cheating, thus the confusion (my fault, I’ve been thinking too much about open relationships lately). Yes, if I wanted to engage in an open relationship I would definitely lay that out clearly. Not “honey, I cheated”, “That’s okay, we’re in an open relationship, didn’t you know?” And I realize that cheating is possible in an open relationship. I wasn’t going to get technical because I was talking about nonmonogamy in general in relation to people talking about immediately walking away from everything just from knowing that their partner had sex with another person. I was just pondering why this was the most common sentiment.
I didn’t say that. I said humans “tend” to be naturally non-monogamous, and this is backed up by a large amount of scientific evidence. But I also know plenty of people that feel right at home being with one person forever, which is why I added “YMMV”. And I certainly didn’t say it was the best for everyone, by any means. I was commenting on how dead-set mainstream society is on two-person relationships, and how non-monogamy is still absolutely unthinkable to many people, despite the scientific conclusion that – I’ll say it again – humans tend to be naturally non-monogamous.
But yeah, again, I think my first post was talking about something slightly different from what the OP was talking about. My bad. I just really wanted to mull the idea over but I don’t feel confident enough to start my own thread.
Mostly because when my partners did stray, they hurt the relationship. The hurt was the result of the LIE not the fucking someone else.
If we had worked out some rules about it before hand, then things would be a lot different now.
Yep. I’m polyamorous and don’t do jealousy and sexual possessiveness, never have understood it emotionally. I’ve annoyed a great many people on this message board about it, in fact.
One of the reasons I have pissed off so many SDMB regulars is that I find (and say) that i have to wonder about the true feelings of you sexually possessive types, because it’s absolutely batshit-incomprehensible to me that you go through life saying to your partner “Because I love you oh so much, it is my wish that if you want to have sex with someone other than me, you deny that to yourself”.
For what it’s worth, your first post was perfectly clear to me, and it didn’t feel entirely off topic.
But anyhow, I just wanted to point out that “non-monogamous” and “don’t feel jealousy” are not the same thing at all.
Some non-monogamous people do still feel jealousy, they simply don’t give it great importance in their relationship.
Many many many (I’d be willing to venture the vast majority of) non-monogamous people are *nominally *monogamous but not practically so, and will feel (and express) great jealousy when their partner is likewise found to be non-monogamous. Some of the most mind bending arguments to witness are the ones where he finds out she was cheating and loses his shit, then goes to cry on the shoulder of his secret mistress! I mean, really?! Yeah, really. My husband and I had a silly announcer-phrase for this phenom whenever it came up in front of us or in a TV show or movie: “Another relationship problem solved by: Polyamory!”
Some non-monogamous people get off on jealousy. The feelings of jealousy become sexually arousing, and so they encourage their partner to seek other partners even while it drives them crazy with jealousy. Then when their partner gets home, sexual sparks fly, driven by that jealousy.
So, yes, your points are valid but perhaps not, as you say, pertinent to the OP. I don’t know that she’s questioning whether non-monogamy makes her “abnormal”, she’s questioning whether her lack of *jealousy *makes her abnormal. After all, her husband is non-monogamous and feels jealousy (sounds like the first type of my examples), and she seems under the impression that that is more “normal” than her feelings. (And I think she’s right about that: even in the poly community, more people feel jealousy than don’t, at least as the outset; they’re just determined to overcome it or accord it no importance in their relationships.)
You’re certainly not the only person in the thread to fixate on the non-monogamy part of the OP though, so don’t beat yourself up about it.
No you aren’t that abnormal. There are plenty of others. My wife and I share a somewhat open relationship. She is bi (leans heavily hetero though), and occasionally wishes to have sex with women. Currently our marriage allows that so long as I get to participate as well, or give my consent. Eventually this may progress to allowing men into the equation, which would have to open the door to extra female partners chosen for my benefit alone, but given that I have no bi tendencies it’s going to take a while for me to grow up enough to accept this idea. Sex in this respect is for fun rather than emotional bonding. We do plenty of that when we are together alone.
This sort of thing usually requires partners who are emotionally mature, confident in their relationship, and have excellent communication. Ground rules are set and followed. It isn’t about seeking emotional fulfillment elsewhere, which is what most, if not all cheating stems from. Contrary to popular belief, most men also feel unwanted, unloved, unattractive when their partner suddenly becomes uninterested in sex. It not usually a simple case of “horniness”. Cheaters nearly always have problems in their relationships whether it is a power imbalance, emotional uninvestment, bad communication, or just plain old emotional immaturity. It is sad how much of society stops growing at the high school level in that regard.
So when you said “I would prefer my partner to be only with me” you meant “I would prefer my partner not lie to me”?
Oh wow, didn’t mean to totally abandon this thread. I got busy over the weekend and kind of forgot about it.
There’s a bit of discussion here about jealousy and non-monogamy. I’m pretty sure most non-monogamous folks still feel some form of jealousy. They just consider it to be a fair trade for the type of lifestyle they want to live. The fact that my husband does get jealous sometimes really isn’t much of a hindrance to our poly relationship. The trick is that we always talk about it openly. He doesn’t try to repress it, and I don’t try to argue him out of the way he feels. We acknowledge it and decide together what to do about it.
Someone upthread asked about how I would feel if he left me for another woman he’d been dating. Well, I’d be devastated. When it comes down to it, though, I want him to be happy. If he ever decides that he would be happier with another woman instead of me, it would break my heart, but he would go with my blessing. This would be just as true if we were monogamous and he fell in love with someone else.
Someone also mentioned a scenario where one partner in a relationship is unable/unwilling to have sex due to a medical issue. I actually used to know a couple with that exact problem. The wife had something happen to her (I never got all the details) that basically erased her sex drive completely. She let her husband have a girlfriend on the side to take care of his sexual needs. Everyone involved was fine with it. Even the girlfriend had no problem with her status as “fuck buddy”.
So if sex is unimportant in a relationship, why does it suddenly become so important if you have it with someone else?
Either it’s important, or it’s unimportant.
And anyway, it’s pretty rare for a medical condition to make it impossible for one person to satisfy their partner’s sexual needs completely. Even if you have no sexual desire. I don’t get excited about the idea of doing the laundry but I do it anyway because it needs doing. If I lost all sexual desire but my wife didn’t, I’d still be obligated to take care of her sexually even if it did nothing for me, just like I have to change the baby’s diaper when the diaper is full.
Wow. If that isn’t appealing, I don’t know what is.
Really? I don’t know anyone who wants to be the recipient of Unpleasant Chore Sex. I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t want my husband to have sex with other people, but if there was a complete loss of desire/function on my part he’d have my blessing. I’d rather have a happy best friend husband than a frustrated, possibly resentful husband.
Well, let’s put it this way. Changing a baby’s diaper is a chore. It’s not pleasant. But it’s sweet. It’s taking care of a helpless little person. Maybe “changing a baby’s diaper” has different connotations for me that it doesn’t have for most people.
Changing a diaper is an unpleasant chore, in the sense that if there was a magic wand that you could wave to make the poop magically disappear and have the baby clean and dry in a twinkling, yeah, I’d wave that wand every time. But it isn’t unpleasant in that you’re cursing the baby’s goddam bowels every time you do it. It’s just a thing that you’ve got to do, and it’s pleasant to help the baby, to relieve them of their discomfort.
Does that make any sense?
Maybe an analogy that would make more sense to more people would be cooking dinner for my spouse every day, even if I had cancer like Roger Ebert and was unable to eat solid food anymore. Just because I wasn’t able to enjoy the dinner I was preparing, that wouldn’t make it an unpleasant chore to prepare the dinner for my loved ones, would it?
As others have said, yes, you’re abnormal, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I always assumed I was a jealous person, but it turned out I was only jealous in the abstract. My fiance and I opened up our relationship a little bit last year, and I can’t say I haven’t experienced any insecurity, but I haven’t been jealous of the other women, and I always enjoy hearing as much detail as he’s willing to share about his liaisons.
I read something last year about jealousy that made a lot of sense to me. I think it was in Tristan Taormino’s book Opening Up. In essence, the idea was that we each have an idea of our special role within our partner’s life, and a lot of jealousy is driven by a feeling that someone else might play the same role, thus replacing us. If an open relationship includes a distinct role for each person, then there’s going to be less conflict and less jealousy. So, for instance, where there are things I enjoy that my fiance doesn’t, he’ll usually give me the okay to do them with other people. Those things aren’t part of our relationship, so they don’t threaten his role. I don’t mind if he has one-night stands with other women because I know he’s going to come home to me; they don’t threaten my role as his life partner. In a few months, once we’re married and I have the special title (and role) of “wife,” I think I’ll be okay with him having a friends-with-benefits arrangement with someone. For many people, sex with their partner is part of their special role, and they aren’t comfortable sharing that part of their relationship.
Except you don’t really know that he’s going to come home to you. You believe it, but is your belief justified? We’ve all seen the stories “I thought everything was going fine until…”
Nobody really ever knows if their spouse is going to come home to them, now do they? What does it matter if they’re monogamous or not?
If anything, this is the hypothetical that actually made me realize before that I’d be open to. . .well, open relationships. In this scenario, I’d want my hypothetical husband to get his. The reality is, I’d probably marry someone with a sex drive similar to mine and who puts sex as an important priority. If I were made unavailable, of course I wouldn’t be so cruel as to say he had to suffer. Sex is just sex. Is it like that for everyone? Of course not. But for me, I most certainly can distinguish sex from love or sex from romance.
To the OP, I’m not sure how active you are in the swinger community, but it has been brought to my attention lately that it is. . . huge. I was legitimately surprised by the fact that I’m basically surrounded by swingers. The neatest thing I’ve realized, though, is that they almost all have your attitude-- and as someone who is traditionally a bit jealous, it has made me reassess my position and my attitudes. I’ve started questioning WHY I’m jealous and WHY certain things bother me. Am I swinger? No. (I mean, I’m also not married or in a relationship, so it’d be very hard for me to be anyway!). But I think I’m definitely moving more toward your way of thinking and if nothing else, it’s because every person I’ve so far met in that open lifestyle is so much healthier, so much happier, and so much more confidant in their relationships than any of the regular folks I’ve met.
Yes, it’s abnormal, and I feel your pain. I’ve never been a jealous person at all. Of course, I’ve never been in an open relationship either (but not from lack of trying! My problem lately has been trying to find a similarly minded gal who’s not already taken). To me, sex is simply something fun to do and I think more people need to do it more often. It relaxes the vitreous humours.
I don’t think I want my vitreous humors relaxed. At all. 