I realize that people will ask these kinds of questions. I already talked about how we got started so it’s not like we were all that innocent. But on the other hand…people have relationships. And people in those relationships have sex. That’s normal relationship behavior. So Alison and Bianca and I had a relationship… connect those dots. It just wasn’t that shocking or unusual for us that the three of us should go out to meals together, watch movies together, go to bars together, and, yes, have sex together. It wasn’t what our relationship was about. Part of it, but not all of it. Just like any other relationship.
That said, we did have some “off-triad” activity. Alison and I did have contact before and after of course. Alison and Bianca fooled around together before the three of us tried things, and good thing that was… It was Alison’s first same-sex encounter and it made things less awkward when the three of us were ready. And Bianca and I got together like nitro and glycerin, though we never did anything without Alison at least around.
The three of us fit well together and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Yeah, I’m sad it went that way too. While there were some good times involved things just went bad to worse to really terrible. No, we didn’t have poly friends. Bianca had been in at least one poly relationship before but she was the one who seemed most lost at times. Alison hadn’t had one but she’d at least had more dating experience than I had. For me it was like taking batting practice for the first time, then going up against Nolan Ryan.
Alison and I were in our mid 30’s. Bianca was just approaching 30. We tried to do some research, we really did. I have to say a lot of what I read was WAY too optimistic. It assumed that, if you hadn’t already been poly, you’d at least thought about it for a long time and knew yourself and your partners like the back of your hand. I learned the lingo but not much else. Not that it would have done much good I’m afraid. As I say Bianca would set rules then break them. The FIRST thing she did after setting our first boundaries was to go behind Alison’s back and try to get me to go to her place on my own. Alison really tore info her over that and that did scare her into following the rules long enough to get our relationship to develop a bit. Then NRE took hold, and, yeah, you probably know what happened then.
I was seeing a counselor for my mental problems at the time. I told her about what was going on. She looked at me like I’d crapped on the floor and asked me to go see another counselor. I didn’t tell the new counselor about this. Obviously that didn’t help our relationship, but I did at least see the new counselor for five years, the longest I ever spent with one.
No, go ahead and be nosy. My god what I’ve written already. This has been very unburdening.
I tried to treat Alison and Bianca as equal but different. Bianca was troubled that I seemed to spend more time with Alison, and Alison was upset that Bianca and I seemed more sexually compatible. But I wanted to spend more time with Bianca and have better sex with Alison. They kind of fell into stereotypes that were hard to break.
Alison kind of handled the fact that Bianca and I got along so well in bed. I remember about one, um, incident, Alison said something like “damn, I ain’t even mad, I’m just glad I got to see that.” Bianca though could really not get over the fact that Alison and I had more in common and were on a closer wavelength intellectually. She tried desperately to get interested in my hobbies. She even played video games, which she had never done. Honestly I rather enjoyed just talking to her, but she had a hard time accepting that. That did hurt our relationship. Proof I guess that sexual compatibility isn’t everything.
And what made you and Allison decide to try a non-conventional arrangement in the first place? If you’ve explained both these things, I apologize because I missed it somewhere.
Yeah. Yikes. You’re lucky you came out with only a broken heart, and not a litany of STD’s.
Please realize I don’t say any of this to pick on you. You tried it, it didn’t work, or at least it didn’t work with these two, and that’s that. That’s reality. You clearly learned a lot from it, and that’s a good thing. I just hope readers don’t take away that this is what polyamorous relationships are always, or even mostly, like.
I’d have the same reservations if Anthony Weiner started an “ask the former monogamist” thread about his marriage.
(For the folks at home, NRE stands for New Relationship Energy. It’s the intoxicating feeling you get when you’re hitting it off with a new partner.)
It seems like Bianca was just a total creep. I’m sorry she got her claws into you. I’m going to guess that she was actually getting off on ruining your relationship with Alison. Maybe the great sex she had with you was a sort of performance, with Alison as the intended audience. “See how much better I am than you? I can fuck your boyfriend better than you ever could. I’ll replace you!”
Hi, boring monogamous middle-aged woman who has been married since college here. But I have several polyamorous friends, and have at least some sense of how their relationships work. And they seem, um, less toxic than the one you describe.
I don’t think I could do it. I think I’d get jealous. But it does seem to work out well for some people.
You know, I haven’t explained that and for good reason. I’m not really sure why we did.
When I read through the polyamory boards, I never got a sense of why people had taken the path they had. I got a sense of what they were trying to do with their relationships. But obviously at some point they looked at the world, 99% of which is devoted to monogamy or celibacy purposeful or accidental, and they said to themselves “I will follow a different path.” I don’t know why Alison and I chose that path.
Bianca, I understood. She was a person who was damaged, and I don’t say that polyamorists are damaged people, it’s that the nature of her damage caused her to seek physical affection from many people. It was why she could say to herself “well I’ve got two people who love me and lavish me with affection, I’ll throw that away to hang out with a swinger party.” And I’m not defending that. But things in her past made her do that.
I can’t speak for Alison. I do know she wanted to give voice to her bisexuality and having a simultaneous relationship with a man and a woman did that to some extent. There were times she was very happy with the arrangement. For me, all I can say is that it was flattering, yes, to be with two very devoted women. For all the trouble there was, it did fill some need I didn’t know I had. Alison and Bianca were so different and supported me together in a way that one woman has never done. My now-wife is very close. But two can do what one cannot. “The burdens of a relationship are so heavy that it takes two to carry them…sometimes three,” wrote a French philosopher (who would know). At its best our relationship was just heavy enough for three to carry.
There was an old beer commercial, I think starring Bernie Mac, where the protagonist imagines himself on a desert island with two hot women, who bring him cold beer. He smiles and chuckles to himself…then the women start fighting with him and each other. Bernie snaps out of his reverie real fast.
It was never quite like that in our relationship. Alison and Bianca didn’t fight because that wasn’t their nature. But they did seethe quietly, usually through me. I got to see first hand a lot of what women usually save for their friends. Alison was tall and thin, Bianca short and curvy. Alison would say, look how aroused you are by Bianca, I wish I had curves like hers. Bianca would say, you were attracted to Alison first, you must like the tall girls and I’m just short. That was hard to handle. My first wife had an eating disorder so I was familiar with body issues. But this was something new especially as at the same time I was trying to assure each woman that not only did I find her attractive but the other woman found her attractive too.
Having said that…well, I’m not going to deny there wasn’t a real sense of “oh my Lord, nobody would believe what I am doing” to the relationship. That was part of the reason I hadn’t started this thread before. It was really fun to be wandering around bars with two women hanging on me, I’m not going to lie about that. There was some sense of, well, I have had horrible luck in relationships, I stayed with the grad student who treated me so badly, I supported my ex wife through her body issues only for her to go back to an ex boyfriend the first time things got tough, I remained a virgin into my mid 20s, I fought mental illness and debilitating headaches and now. After the first time the three of us made love, Alison said to me, “I’m almost happier for you than I am for us.” It was a self-deprecating, very Alison thing to say, and yet I understood why she said it. Certainly there was a lot to go through to get to that moment, but I wouldn’t deny that it was quite a memorable one.
Poly person here! I’m glad you decided to get some of your thoughts out Cog. Poly is hard and there is always a lot of give and take, but adding mental health issues to the mix makes it even more challenging. I hope this chance to open up to yourself will help you with your current relationship. ((((Cog))))
(I’m married, my husband has two other girlfriends, I have a steady boyfriend and my boyfriend has another steady girlfriend. There are rough patches, but we all like and respect each other enough to keep it working. My husband and I are the only ones who actually live together.)
I appreciate the musical humor (even if my musical skills are zero). I’ve heard relationships with four people referred to as a “quad” but I haven’t heard any names for people in larger groups other than the catchall phrase “moresome.” That sounds somewhat gross to be honest…might as well call it a “cluster.”
I probably should have addressed this early on, because it has come up in a few replies. As some of you know from my posting history I have had some significant problems with mental illness. Handling those problems is a daily struggle which I do better or worse over time at.
If you met me you might notice I have a hard time looking you in the eyes. It is hard for me to make an emotional contact with people. That isn’t to say that I don’t want that greatly. And that dichotomy is a difficult balance. I was badly damaged by my first relationships because I wanted an emotional relationship but I wasn’t good at cultivating them (or finding a woman I could do that with). Alison was the first woman I did feel that way towards. But having waited so long in my life for that I was overwhelming to her. That I do blame myself for. My over emotionalism also allowed me to get exploited by Bianca. She thrived on drama and bad decisions, things which I have in great supply.
What that has to do with polyamory is this: I recognized in my time on the polyamory sites that those who made relationships last were those who were able to be in control of our emotions. I wasn’t. Alison wasn’t. Bianca was but she used that to manipulate situations. She’d be tearful and shouting one minute then perfectly fine the next if that’s what suited her needs. In retrospect that was not a good combination for polyamory. Maybe if Alison and I were more settled and calmer we would have been OK. But life happens when you’re not ready. I hope that is a helpful comment to those considering this life.
I hope you do not mind me asking a few questions. Though things went so badly for us, and I doubt I will ever live this life again, I am curious as to how others were able to succeed. Anyone else is free to chime in as well. Thiat is part of the spirit of poly, isn’t it?
Your situation seems so different from mine. We always had to be aware of how our bilateral activities affected the third person; that seems less of a burden for you. It seemed to me on the boards I was involved in that relationships like yours were less stressful, less claustrophobic. Plus I doubt any of your partners is clamoring to move in with you like Bianca was with us.
Were you and your husband poly before you married? How did you meet your partners, and did you and your spouse have to approve of each others’ partners? Are there “rules of engagement” in your relationships that one of you can invoke or veto? How do you handle jealousy? Forgive me if this last question is over personal, but how is safe sex handled in your group?
I am quite fascinated by those who have made poly work (whatever that word means). I remember going on the board with a question starting “we have been together for only four months” and getting a lot of responses like “how did you manage to get it to last that long?!” So longer-term relationships like yours seems to be are quite interesting to me.
Figured this would come up. She does know. I think it bothers her a little… It is hard to convince her I will be entirely faithful, not because I am the cheating kind (I have not at all) but because she fears that she will not be enough for me. This point is hard for me to handle.
One of the side effects of being around Bianca was that I became much more aware of when women were flirtatious. Before I was oblivious to that, now because she was so obvious about it I notice patterns of behavior. I go on business trips a lot and during one trip one woman I knew before my marriage started throwing Bianca Looks at me, eventually dropping all pretenses and inviting me back to her place. I laughed it off as a bit of a joke (“you know I’m married! I would never do something like that!”) But on the way back home I started thinking “well I didn’t know Alison was up for polyamory before it happened, maybe my wife would be OK…” But in the end I decided not to. I haven’t thought about that since. When my wife and I spent 18 months apart, I never thought of it. It would have been terrible to do it anyway.
I’d like to think that my wife would write off this as a colorful phase of my past, and maybe she does. But I’m not sure. Bianca thought “once poly, always poly” was the rule. I’m not sure if I am and that’s why I’m not sure if my wife is sure.
Yes, we were poly before we started dating. We’ve been a couple since 2001.
I’ve known my boyfriend as a friend for about 20 years. We only started dating in 2011. We meet new people generally through friends.
I dislike the concept of “approving” each other’s partners. My husband prefers the approval process. It used to be a major sticking point, but not so much anymore, and it was mostly spurred by abandonment issues (which usually shows up as jealousy). We are pretty settled in our choices of partners now, so it’s not so much of a big deal anymore. And before anyone thinks my husband is a horn-dog, he’s in his early 60s and his ladies are in their 50s, so it’s not like it’s a sex fest. I’m not going to go into the intimate details of our sex lives, though.
re: Rules of Engagement - at first there was a lot of “I don’t want you to’s,” but at this point it’s mostly just remembering to let the other one know when plans have been made. Just like any long-term relationship, you settle into whatever routine is comfortable.
Jealousy is something that gets easier to deal with over time. At the beginning of a new relationship it may flare up, but after all of this time we both realize that it’s a temporary feeling and a brief period of reassurances, it resolves itself.
Here’s a (true) story about a family that has been successfully polyamorous for quite a long time. The format is sort of annoying, because there are places where it wants to load a video, and won’t do anything else until it has done so. But the information might be interesting to you and others.
TheFaerie: I wonder whether it is easier to be polyamorous later in life. At the age when I was active there were all kinds of people–conservative employers, potentially disapproving parents, married friends with kids–who would have been horrified to learn about my relationship. Plus, too, there is the point you mention about older people not necessarily wanting to boink everything in sight, not that that holds for everyone. I suppose there is an older group of people who have been divorced or widowed who society does not expect to “settle down” with one partner, and for whom polyamory is not just attractive but feasible. I could be wrong about this.
I’m not going to go into the intimate details of our sex lives, though.