Ask the Poly person

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Reciprocally, I can understanding falling in love with someone and wanting to be with them a lot and wanting to have them in your life permanently (or at least on an ongoing basis), but monogamous people in that situation demand exclusivity. Or begin practicing it themselves before it’s demanded. Never understood the gut-level inclination to do that. I can understand intellectually that people are afraid of their partners promising exclusivity to someone else if they can, indeed, have a “someone else”, and I can sort of understand that there’s more security for the relationship if your partner doesn’t also nurture other relationships of comparable importance, but it still seems like very odd behavior. (And the demanding of exclusivity doesn’t seem very loving).

Maybe we’re just wired differently or something.

42

I’m curious, were any of these girlfriends married? That would be odd if you introduced someone as your girlfriend AND they mentioned they had a different husband.
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Two of my girlfriends are married. A1 is married to L’s other girlfriend, which is a misleading description of what’s actually going on there: three poly people cannot legally marry as a threesome in New York (or any other state AFAIK), either girlfriend would have felt left out if L married the other one alone, and yet they wanted a legal bond connecting their poly household. Their solution was for the two women to marry despite the two of them not being a romantic pairing.

A3 is still married to her husband, from whom she is separated. She refers to him as her husband when the context makes it plain she is speaking in the past tense, and may specify “my husband, from whom I’m separated” or sometimes simplify to “ex-husband” although they aren’t divorced.

Honestly, I think if one of them were actively married to another guy, we’d just explain that and explain that the husband knows and is on board with the polyamorous arrangement. I think they’d cope with that.

43

So can you give the “evolution” of a poly relationship?

For example in a normal “date” you call each other up and if the attraction is there you meet up. Then after talking you set up a formal date and do something fun (like see a movie). The relationship grows and eventually their is sex.

Or lets say you meet someone thru work. Then it goes from professional relationship, to personal relationship, to intimacy.

Also please discuss ending a poly relationship. For most couples endings can come pretty quickly when you plain decide it isnt working out and you end it there. Rarely do ex’s stay friends.

44

AHunter3, as a man without a primary/priority partner, do you feel like you’re under greater scrutiny or face greater cynicism about your desire to have multiple loving relationships …as opposed to just wanting multiple sexual possibilities without commitment?

Not that it seems you care too much about the opinions of others, but do you notice such an attitude from people?

It seems to me that a couple who choose to add additional relationships that expand upon their romantic lives, as in Lucretia’s situation, might be more readily evaluated with the attitude “Well, whatever makes them happy …as long as there’s honesty there’s no harm done.”

And it seems to me that a single woman who is polyamorously romantic may be respected for owning her sexuality and exercising her autonomy and independence.

But as a single man who is polyamorously romantic, it seems he’s more likely to get “Yeah, right, ‘multiple loving relationships’, wished I’d have thought of that, dude,” or “Gee, someone’s just afraid of commitment,” or any other variation of accusation that you only care about the sex and “polyamory” is just your way of being sanctimonious about it.
If you feel like there is additional distrust of your motives, do you also encounter that distrust from other poly people or just from monogamous people?

I’ve read that many (not all) nudist communities (and I’m not equating nudism with polyamorism, just illustrating where my question is coming from), at camps/resorts couples and families are welcome, single women are welcome, but single men are not welcome. People who are involved in nudist communities seem to always assert that it’s not something sexual (and I’m not challenging this assertion) and yet a single man wanting to participate seems to be met with distrust. Certainly a single man can espouse the values of the lifestyle just as anyone else, so it seems unfair to be held to higher scrutiny.

Edit to Add: Lucretia, I’m also interested in your take on this- just directing it at AHunter3 because it is more closely tied to his situation.

45

Do you find it emotionally fulfilling for your partner to have other partners?

Do you find it sexually exciting when you partner is getting ready to go out with another partner, or is with another partner, or comes home after being with another partner?

Do you and your partner(s) help each other in finding further partners?

46

In our case, our individual poly relationships don’t differ hugely from any standard relationship. We also meet, in whatever capacity, find each other attractive, go on a date, etc. It may or may not proceed to sex, depending on whatever spark exists, and sometimes it’s just not there. The one difference might be that often we meet potential partners in the setting of poly community meet ups or events. That actually makes it easier, because the you don’t have to have the “I’m poly” “What’s poly?” “Wel…” conversation. Sometimes non-poly people are open to that, sometimes not.

Ending a poly relationship, for us, also looks a great deal like ending a conventional relationship. One of the various versions of “This isn’t working out”. Sometimes amicably, sometimes not. Like I said before…we are human. Again, if that particular person was poly, you might then subsequently see them at poly community events. If the split wasn’t amicable, then you’d handle that however you felt worked best for you.

I’m still very dear friends with my very first poly partner and his then-wife, who’s with a new primary, who I’m also very good friends with. My husband, on the other hand, has one ex he’ll never speak to again. It really all depends on the people and the relationship, just like anything else.

47

While I’ve not had much experience with the egalitarian poly that AHunter3 uses, I will say that our actual relationships don’t merely “expand on our romantic lives”. They are secondary, but they are also fully fledged actual relationships, that involve love, not just sex. I don’t know if that’s what you were saying, but I wanted to make that clear. We do have/have had casual partners/FWBs, too, from time to time, as well, but when we declare someone a “girlfriend/boyfriend”, we regard them as exactly that.

As far as judgement…well, I’m sure I’ve been subject to it, but I’ve never really felt any overtly. I’m kinda socially clueless, though, so who knows, I might have been on the receiving end and never knew. Everyone who’s known about it, though, who’s talked to me about it, has been pretty respectful. I’ve had some curious questions, but as you can see, I’ve got no problem with that.

48

Sorry, that’s how I myself would use the term romantic: that it’s not just sexual, that there’s a loving relationship that is broader and more deep than simply a sexual outlet. I apologize if we’re miscommunicating with different understanding of the terms.

49

I don’t think we are, but just in case that’s what you meant, I wanted to clarify. No worries! :slight_smile:

50

Ok, lets say your married but in a poly relationship. Christmas is coming and you have $100 to spend on a gift to that someone/someone’s special.

So how would you spend it? $50 for each or $75 for your spouse?

51

Maybe. It depends. What would please my spouse? What would please the other people in my life? Honestly, if all I’ve got it 100 bucks for a present that has to be spread amongst multiple people, then probably that’s going to gas and everyone else is getting a home cooked meal and a blowjob.

I suspect your question is more to do with things like finite resources, though. Or, at least, that’s how I’m answering it. The serious answer is that I’ll try and allocate limited resources in order of what happens to be a priority at the moment. If, for instance, I haven’t seen boyfriend A in two weeks, and he’s asking for time, I might explain the situation to my husband, and ask for some extra time for A this weekend. He’d likely agree, because he’ll have asked for similar things in the past. Those sorts of things tend to be dealt with as they come up.

52

So you’ve been married 28 years and are still in love. If for some reason your husband decided he was done with the lifestyle and now wanted exclusivity, would it end the marraige? Let’s assume it isn’t sudden but is something that has evolved naturally for him, let’s say by him slowly shedding partners over a year or two until it was just you.

Or let’s say he didn’t demand it, but he had ceased living a poly lifestyle while you continued to and he said it made him unhappy that you still did, but he’d grudgingly tolerate it. Deal breaker?

53

This strikes as a very wise answer. Seriously.

54

Well, I’ll start by saying this. I try hard not to pat myself on the back, but we’ve survived things that would break a lot of marriages. We were a military couple until literally a month ago, and dealt with frequent moves, deployments, and the raising of children during that. Besides that, we’ve negotiated the sometimes messy transition from fully monogamous to fully poly. We’re pretty solid, and what’s kept us that way is the fact that we always focused on each other as our first priority.

So, to your question…honestly, I don’t think it would break us up. If, on the odd chance that did happen (and to be clear…I find it a really remote possibility), we’d do what we always do. We’d talk, we’d discuss, maybe table it for a while, come back to it, maybe shed some tears, maybe do some couple reinforcing in the meantime…but at some point we’d come to an answer. I know you want me to give you a “If A then B” answer, but I can’t, that’s not how we operate. We take things a they come up, and work through them. Sometimes they fall out one way, sometimes another.

55

Perfectly reasonable answer :). I knew a long-time poly couple where one was much more active than the other and things didn’t work out that well in the end. But of course break-ups can happen to any couple.

56

Thanks. :slight_smile: And yeah, sometimes that happens. Sometimes the relative poly-ness of the individuals is part of it, sometimes it’s other things. Of course, any time a poly couple divorces, then everyone points and says “See!! Poly doesn’t work!”, ignoring the fully half of “monogamous” couples that also divorce.

57

Aha! This sparks another line of questioning. :slight_smile:

  • I’ve heard from several current and former servicepeople (Army and Navy, specifically) that the poly lifestyle is pretty widespread there compared to the population at large. Would you agree with that?

  • Was your introduction to the lifestyle through other military personnel who were already swinging?

58

Thanks. :slight_smile: I’ve got a pretty wide practical streak

59

I would absolutely agree with that. In fact, the received knowledge is that the modern iteration of swinging actually originated in the test pilot community, where it functioned to build bonds between families, so if a pilot was killed, he could have some assurance his family would be cared for. In the Navy, specifically, where “6 months in 6 months out” is very common, it’s quite common for couples to give their partners license to form bonds when the other one is gone. Of course, each couple, again (am I sounding like a broken record, yet?), makes these arrangements with their own sets of boundaries and expectations.

Our introduction to swinging was not via the military community, but via the swinging community in civilian Germany, which is HUGE. Seriously, those people love sex, of many various iterations. We has some wonderful experiences there. We did, later, engage other military couples, but that was after we were already established as swingers.

60

Sometimes. I have run into the attitude that polyamory somehow benefits men in those relationships and exploits women.

Anecdotal trivia: A poly woman friend of mine had relatives that at first thought she was in a harem, one of many women who all “belonged” to the same man. Obviously bad for her. She explained that there were multiple males in the household and that several of them were boyfriends of hers — in other words, while she was one of several women, each guy was one of several men from her standpoint. Relatives said this was obviously bad for her, now she was obliged to have sex with all these different guys!

Yeah, I do encounter those attitudes.

So far never from any other poly people.