You’re being a bit blind to reality. Reality is that faithfulness = one partner. When you hear on the evening news that someone has been unfaithful, you know without someone explaining through several dictionary definitions that the person got themselves a new sex parter. You know this. It’s true and self-evident. Don’t argue semantics with me, and don’t be deliberately blind, either.
I don’t know if you are necessarily being unfaithful, however. If you don’t commit to someone, how can you be unfaithful? You aren’t faithful in the first place if you don’t have one partner. Trying to tell us that what we know is the truth – that faithfulness means one partner because it’s common sense – is NOT true is banging your head against the wall. You’re not faithful, deal with it.
Marcie says she might share me with other women if they were all starving, I was cooked to perfection and they had the right bottle of wine. Otherwise, no way.
Oh, I never said that the common meaning to unfaithful wasn’t exactly what you say it is. What I’m saying is that it’s not necessarily true in every case - “faithful” and “commited” are words that have, in our society, connotations of warm, loving, happy with each other, good partners, and in the absence of definitions otherwise can easily mean things other than what most people mean. Yes, that’s right, words can mean more than one thing to different people, especially words that are so caught up in emotions like love and jealousy. When some people commit, they commit to one person, they love that person with all of their heart, and they consider that person in what they do. Why can’t other people do that with more than one person and not have it be just as warm and fuzzy and loving?
I do know exactly what it means when someone says “so and so was unfaithful”, but that’s because, like I said earlier, monogamy is the default relationship configuration. Every once in a whle, though, unfaithful means something else, something that (this is all I was trying to point out) does not contradict it’s definition even if it isn’t the exact meaning that is the usual one.
I get the feeling you want to think of polyamorous people as sluts, dirty, a bunch of wild people who want sex sex and more sex and don’t care about any of their partners. This is no more the case for polyamoury than it is for monogamy. Perhaps you are confusing polyamoury with swinging, which is casual sex with multiple partners, but polyamoury also includes loving, yes, loving more than one person at once.
I am entirely loyal, steadfast, and true to both my husband and my mate. Either is therefore an example of being loyal, steadfast, and true, especially to a lover.
I have not betrayed or abandoned – I am “true to obligations of duty, love, etc.” (OED Def 1, loyal) and can be characterised as exhibiting loyalty (OED Def 3.) (Def 2 has to do with a sovereign and is not relevant); my partnerships are firmly fixed and not displaceable (steadfast, 1), and are not threatened or suffering from lack of resolve (def 2); I am, as before noted, steadfast and keeping all my promises (true, 1).
Now, it’s popular among some folks to call polyfolks “unfaithful” because they keep the promises they made rather than the promises other folks want them to make, but I think that’s rather more the problem of people who think they get to define the commitments of other people’s relationships than that of the polyfolks. The commitments I’ve made have worked just fine, though, so I’m not looking for a new deal.
God, no. I don’t think of polyamorous people as sluts, etc. I just don’t think of them as faithful. You can’t be faithful with more than one person, as I’ve stated repeatedly. It’s just impossible.
You’ve got to admit, some poly people are just looking to get laid, and trying to be “cool” at the same time. I’m not saying this to annoy you, just saying what I have seen is the truth. Yeah, it can work, and sometimes it fails spectacularly, mostly in the above instance.
Hah, I am the LAST person to call someone a slut. You have no idea.
I really appreciate your heartfelt post. I like hearing that you are actually loving people. I certainly don’t look down on people who love a lot. I look down on people who use others, like the guy I knew who claimed he was polyamorous and used the women he was with.
However, if it’s like the girl I knew who had loving relationships with her girlfriends AND husband, then it’s all cool.
I really didn’t mean you make you upset, if you are, and judging by the strength of your post you might be a little. I’m just saying that faithful does not mean more than one partner. And I guess we agree on that.
Ok, I promise this will be the last from me on this hijack
I’m not really upset, this is just a bit of an issue for me - just like there’s poly people who think they’re “more enlightened” because they don’t get jealous, there’s monogamous people who think it’s all about sex and that we’re just trying to make sleeping around sound better by calling it something else.
Besides, if I found out who she was I would simply have to destory her, which would probably end in murder charges and jail time; and this would defeat the purpose of getting to have him all to myself, if I wasn’t available cuz I was in jail…
Faithful may commonly be defined that way at this time but it doesn’t mean it always has been.
If it is the agreement one is faithful to, does that not cover polymory? Say if the agreement was “use a rubber, don’t bring home a disease, and I’m drawing the line at siblings.”
Please give me a cite about faithfulness not being defined that way. I’m afraid I don’t believe you, and I don’t have my unabridged OED on me at the moment.
Sure you can be faithful to an agreement. And agreement isn’t your partner.
Elysian, I’m genuinely curious about this, and want to learn. This seems counterintuitive to me, so maybe I’m missing something. Why can’t one be faithful to >1?
It seems counterintuitive that anyone could think they could be faithful to more than one person. I think you’re being deliberately obtuse and trying to lead me into an argument.
And I wrote up a whole big thing and it’s gone, so it’s just going to have to be a mystery to you. If you really want to know, find out yourself.
My answer is NO to all of the above. Perhaps I’m being closed-minded, but it’s just not my thing. Not that I’m not confident sexually, I’ve just always been of the monogamous mindset; it’s how I was brought up and is a value that I don’t see myself bending on.
It’s rather coincidental this thread was posted because I had a similar thought this morning…
The OP left out a scenario: What about consenting to your man’s having sex with another woman because it would be good for HIM, and by extension, good for you?
Probably because unless you were paralyzed from the neck down, I don’t see why this would be considered. How would having sex with another woman other than the wife be “good” for him?
Could we have an example of how this would come about?
For me, it hinges on the terms of the relationships, which I make a point of trying to work out explicitly up front, and touching bases moderately regularly to see whether we still understand the same things by those terms.
And sometimes the cake’s not there at the precise moment when I want it. So ti goes. It’s not there when it’s at work, or visiting a platonic friend, either. I deal
But yes, my relationship with Soren is unique. His relationship with Person X is unique. I – quite literally – don’t worry that he’s going to leave me for Person X because they’re having sex.
Going back a step or two in my own head… I don’t own him. I don’t want to own him. I want to share the parts of his life that he wants to share with me, and share the parts of my life with him that I want to share with him, and build a life together. If/when he goes off to spend time with a friend, I don’t much care whether it’s friendly sex, board games, poker, or discussing politics over beers – so long as I’m secure that he’s coming back to me for the things we value together.
I don’t know if that helps any.
I have a tentative theory that some people are just wired exclusively for polyamory, some exclusively for monogamy, and many slide along the spectrum, from involvement with many people, to sharing a home with one person and seeing others in other permutations and conditions, to casually dating three or four people constantly, to dating three or four people until they decide on one, to serial monogamy, to finding one person and bonding for life. The issue for me is finding someone who is in the same part of the spectrum.
(As a weird datapoint, I have always been openly polyamorous, but have more than once been approached by someone who was openly and explicitly monogamous, whose approach was, “I truly love and desire you, and I want you to change this essential, lifelong aspect of your nature, which has made you the person I desire.” I don’t get that. But I also don’t get polyamorous folks who try to change essentially monogamous folks. Sometimes you have to love without acting on it.)
