A whole-hearted “AMEN!” and rousing cheers of support! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
(When I am God, there will be cosmic bitchslaps administered to polyamorous folks who proclaim that they’re more enlightened than monogamous folks. And cosmic bitchslaps to monogamous folks who proclaim that they’re more enlightened than polyamorous folks. Just do it honestly and ethically, and avoid my wrath.)
The circumstances under which I would consider sharing my husband are more likely to fall under CanvasShoes’ descriptive list. He can haul stuff around and do general fix-it work for other ladies, but I prefer them to be old grey-haired grandma types. 
For the questions posed by the OP, my answers are resoundingly negative.
No, and chances are she would have neatly ended my friendship with her- then and there.
No.
No. If my husband dallies, chances are our marriage will be over.
No.
No.
*Of course “let” is an objectionable word. I’m not my husband’s keeper. I’m his wife. I would make my wishes that he not engage in such activities known. Should he then continue or pursue such activities, I would remove myself from the situation and the marriage. Notice I have not said that such activities are wrong or unenlightened. In my marriage, though, I made it clear up front that I expected faithful monogamy with no exceptions. He accepted that and stated that he expected the same from me. So those are the promises we made and to which we are faithful.
FaerieBeth
“Never, No” to all questions. This was one of the first things we discussed when we started dating and it was always clear, clear, clear that infidelity would be an absolute dealbreaker. My dad’s constant cheating was a big contributor to misery in my childhood.
I’m not sure my husband would react with the same violence of feeling if it were I who were cheating (hypothetically speaking.)
Would you grant a close friend’s request to have sex with him? I have done exactly that, twice, with a former boyfriend, and it was a positive experience. They both saw it as a one-time treat.
Let him have a long-term relation with who would effectively be his other wife, if she was someone you approved of?
I wouldn’t like it. *If * I was *really * sure my LTR had enough (time attention, love) for both, *and * I had veto-right in the beginning, *and * the other woman would be okay with it too (and didn’t want more), and I didn’t have to fear about STD’s, and I liked and respected her, I just might approve. But only if the arrangement gave me a lot of benefits too, like freedom to do likewise.
Or alternatively, adopt an “I don’t want to hear about it” attitude towards any dalliances of his?
In general, I wouldn’t want to hear too many details. Especially not raving details.
But about the “dalliances” I would not accept those. IMHO, polyamory means to have more then one serious * relationship. Fcking around is not polyamory.
*Let him work as a well-paid gigalo, “masseuse”, or sex therapist? * No. I think it is too hard to let that line of work NOT interfere with your own (sexual) LTR.
*Swing, have an open marriage, or otherwise “trade” the right to be with other partners? * Yes, I have some positive experiences with that. In 12 years, my SO and me both had 2 other relationships.
I am not suited for polyamoury, yet I am not really suited for monogamy either. I’ve never been in a relationship with someone I’d like to share. They just never have enough energy. I have buckets of love and passion, it tends to overwhelm people. I could have more than one partner. I’ve just never met anybody else like me at the right time. 
So I tend to smother my s.o.‘s. My current bf can handle the affection, but my libido overwhelms him. So if he goes looking for lovin’ somewhere else I would be MOST displeased.
The one person who could come close was a girl I dated years ago. She was always poly with her other gfs (keeping one LTR and having fun on the side) but when I came along we stayed monogamous.
Maybe if I found a person whose energy matched mine I could share, but currently no.
Even then though, not with a close friend 
that would be weird.
Never. We already discussed that we’d be honest if either of us planned to have sex with someone else. It would be the end of the relationship, but we both agreed that we can respect the honesty and guts it would take to just admit it instead of going out and doing it behind the other’s back.
No way. I couldn’t share my husband with another woman. At all. He feels the same way - both of us are vehemently monogamous, and have been since we began dating.
I don’t think that polyamory is any way wrong - it’s just not something I could engage in because I’m the jealous type. And so is my husband.
I didn’t realize how jealous I was until a few months ago - my husband and I went to another couple’s house for dinner, and that couple had invited another couple - A (the wife) and J (husband). I didn’t know it, but A had a crush on my husband, and thought it might be fun to try to reel him in at dinner. After making lots of suggestive comments throughout the night, she finally started bluntly asking my husband to call her - over and over again. All of us were getting very embarrassed except her husband, who just didn’t notice or was ignoring it. We left a few minutes early because she just got pushier and pushier about it, and our hosts were obviously really uncomfortable. We left to A’s call of “Mr. Overly, don’t forget to call me!! I DO expect to hear from you!” The next day we received a call from the hosts apologizing for A’s behavior - they had no idea that A would behave that way, and never imagined that she would try to hook up with my husband. (My husband’s friend’s wife knew that A had a crush on him, but never dreamed she’d act as she had.) I was absolutely disgusted with A - first, she tried to pick up my husband. Second, even after he politely told her that he would be just fine (I was going out of town and she wanted him to come over because her husband would be out, too, and they could “keep each other company”), she kept pushing and pushing and just wouldn’t let it go, even though he expressed absolutely no interest. I just wanted to rip her face off. I wasn’t mad at my husband AT ALL - he was trying to ignore it. But if he had called her, I would have been furious.
So, no, I don’t think I could handle my husband being in another LTR or even having sex with someone else while he was with me. I’m pretty sure that that would end the relationship. As for whether or not he had any dalliances, I’d want to know, and that would probably end the relationship, too.
Hijack/question. Sorry, if this is too much of a hijack, perhaps another thread should be started? But I’m really curious.
See, this is one thing (not the only thing) that’s always “bothered” me about polysex. If the chocolate cake is available for whoever wants it, then there are GOING to be times when the chocolate cakes is on someone else’s coffee table and maybe even someone ELSE’S coffee table after that, so how are you “getting to have the chocolate cake when you want it”?
Also, humans aren’t cake. It’s not like it’s just chocolate cake. “YOUR” cake, is the only cake of its kind on the planet, a wholly unique cake.
Thoughts?
Damn, now I want cholocate cake 
(ummm, the bakery kind).
Never.
If a guy is with me, he is with ONLY me.
If one of my partners isn’t around because he’s with another partner, that isn’t any different for me than if he isn’t around because he’s at work, playing poker, visiting his mother, or any other reason he wouldn’t be right here right now. Their time is their own; so long as each spends the time with me that our relationship needs to be healthy and doesn’t break our agreements, I don’t feel that I have any real basis for trying to arrange the rest of it.
And this is one of the reasons I don’t do monogamous relationships.
(To more directly respond to the OP, which I realised I didn’t do before, given that I will not consent to a monogamous relationship, I think it would be sort of tacky to expect my partners to be monogamous. But I don’t do don’t ask, don’t tell stuff; my personal suspicion is that it tends to bite people on the ass.)
That particular metaphor breaks down way before that.
I’m firmly in the hell no camp. “Faithful” to me does mean monogamous, and if a guy is coming from a definitional universe so far removed from my own that he doesn’t agree, then he’s clearly not the guy for me. I could more easily deal with a guy who cheats on me than one who doesn’t agree with the concept of “cheating.” The former I’d leave in a red-hot minute; the latter I’d never go on a second date with.
And for people who want to argue with my morality or my choice: Don’t bother. This is a poll soliciting answers, and this is mine.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
[ul]
[li]Grant a close friend’s request to have sex with him?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Yes, as long as I was involved in the process and he was open with me about everything. I admit though, I’d probably want to be there with them!
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
[ul]
[li]Let him have a long-term relation with who would effectively be his other wife, if she was someone you approved of?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Yes, well, and as long as she liked playing with red headed women too!
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
[ul]
[li]Or alternatively, adopt an “I don’t want to hear about it” attitude towards any dalliances of his?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Never, this ‘I don’t want to hear about it’ attitude would be hurtful for me.
Also, sex is fun, talking about it is fun, why would my husband keep me out of his life in this way?
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
[ul]
[li]Let him work as a well-paid gigalo, “masseuse”, or sex therapist?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
I don’t think I would like it, I would worry about danger for him.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
[ul]
[li]Swing, have an open marriage, or otherwise “trade” the right to be with other partners?[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Yes.
Granted, if you had asked me these questions a year ago, I wonder if I would have answered the same way. I have always been open to the idea of threesomes, open relationships, exploring etc…but it was something I thought I would never actually do. I joked to my now husband on our second date that I’d always wanted to try to make love to a woman, and then assured him that it wouldn’t be fair to leave him out if that ever happened. He took me up on the offer a few months ago.
Sorry. Faithful means monogamous. If you have more than one partner, you are not faithful or monogamous. You aren’t committed to any one of them.
Not that I’m going to change your mind or anything. I couldn’t live the way you do. It’s totally alien to me not to be faithful.
I know you’re going to howl at me, “I AM faithful! I’m faithful to them ALL!” Sorry, honey, you’re not. You have more than one partner. You’re not faithful to any of them.
From dictionary.com:
faithful -
loyal -
It may be totally alien for you to not be monogoamous, but there is nothing in the general definition of faithful that means monogamy where it isn’t asked for, only when it is.
For me, the circumstance in which I would share my husband with another person would have to be upon my death. In other words, over my dead body. Even then, I might consider coming back to haunt them both.
I grew up with a father who cheated repeatedly on my mother (over a 40-year span) before they finally divorced two years ago. He’s now married to his long-time girlfriend. I refuse to put my husband, our future children, or anyone else who loves us through what my mom, my sisters and I went through.
“A person” instead of “persons” is the difference in definitions here. Since the dictionary does not say “faithful to a person(s)” it is taken as singular…aka monogmous. At least that is my take on it.
Just my opinion. Not that I personally care and it’s really none of my business about your personal life or preferences. 
I can’t presume I’m not bisexual, so I’m not sure I even fit the premise of this thread, but in my current relationship, my answer would have to be no. The way we’ve defined our marriage, sharing in the sense of being okay with one spouse having sex with a third party independently of the other is out because it would lead to grief.
If I weren’t in this relationship, I don’t know whether or not I’d be okay with it. It would depend entirely on the kind of union I had with the man. Or woman, for that matter. In the right circumstances, with the right person, I can imagine myself living happily with an open relationship. I’m really hoping, though, that if there’s ever a time I’m free to find out, I’ll be so old and decrepit that I wouldn’t even consider embarking on another romantic relationship.
But the definition doesn’t say one ** and only one** person. In being faithful to any given person you are being devoted to them, but if you can be devoted to more than one cause, why can’t you be devoted to more than one person, if you want to be? I’m just tired of monogamous people insisting we’re being unfaithful, when what they really mean is we’re being unfaithful by their definition, not by ours. Faithful isn’t an emotion, but when it comes to being faithful to a person, it’s very tied up with emotions - meaning, different interpretations apply to different people. My SO is devoted to me, which I take to mean in part that he listens to me about our relationship and not what other people think relationships should be.
As I understand it (despite sounding so new-age-y), love (and, one could extend it to it’s respective fluids ) is the only natural resource that grows as it’s used. The more you share your cake, the more there is for you too. Unique as it may be, A may appreciate the creamy frosting, while B may appreciate the moist cake.