Hmm. I thought ‘keeping mistresses’ or ‘keeping whatever the male equivalent of a mistress is’ involved a certain degree of deception of the primary spouse. Am I wrong? Is it out in the open?
It is so “out in the open” that there are places where a man’s women will wait outside the factory on pay day and split the money according to which one is “la legítima” (the one with the papers), how many children each has by him and how many of those children are boys.
I’ve been in a movie theater in which a certain local politician was making out with her boyfriend while her husband was a few rows back with his group of (guys only) friends. I have no idea what exactly do they call it, haven’t asked. Probably “amor libre” (lit “free love”).
Thank you, Sebastienne.
Male, 29, Poly.
Currently married to my lovely wife and primary partner (we have always been open but we also kicked around being poly and finally decided to a few years ago) and dating my secondary partner, a charming woman whose husband is dating another woman, etc. It’s currently a very linear relationship.
I’d like to propose some definitions to keep the thread reasonably on track:
Open Relationship: sexually unconstrained, romantically constrained.
Polyamory: romantically unconstrained AND sexually unconstrained.
In either case, the definition of “cheating” is defined by the couple in question. There’s a whole host of minor stuff (primary and secondary partners and other “ranking” systems, methods of consent (oddly, perhaps, my primary partner doesn’t care one little bit about who I’m involved with but my secondary likes being informed.), and other such.
One of the things that rankles a smidge about being compared to what Nava describes is that, from inside the relationship there’s not even an intimation of scandal or illicitness, and the connotations of the English words she uses smack of that.
I’ve noticed that most of the active poly people in this thread (take Sebastienne for example) seem to know a great many other poly people. How does this tend to work? Are their clubs, social groupings, etc?
I am, personally, open to both Open Relationships, and Polyamorous Relationships.
My wife, however, is 98% not, on both counts.
Therefore, I am monogamous.
My ex-wife and I were Open, and flirting with Poly, but it caused more drama than we wanted, so just went with Open.
Bah, missed the edit window.
telcontar, I have long held a theory that the reason Poly and Open folks usually know so many more of them is that there are certain subcultures that tend to attract them.
pagan
goth
SCA/Faire
BDSM
you’ll also note that there is a HUGE overlap in these social groups as well. I don’t know if this is self-selection, or what, but there it is.
I’m a counterexample, I suppose–while there ARE clubs, etc, in my area of the world they tend to be for “swingers” (realistically, “cheaters”, at least locally)–I only know two other poly couples in real life, and two other couples in an open relationship.
The vast majority of my friends, though, both know and are non-judgemental about it. A few even carry on flirting with the understanding that they’re monogamous but flirting is fun. 
I wonder if it’s because all of those areas cover a lot of ground that’s fantasy-world stuff or specifically anti-authoritarian grounds, and that polyamory as a community as well as these other groups all share an anti-authoritarian/anti-conformity ethos, making it easier to “be” poly rather than conforming to a monogamous viewpoint (or, equally and perversely, being pressured to be poly/free-love because it’s anti-conformity).
All I meant to point is that the situation exists in many places and locations under different names. In a society where men are pretty much expected to keep more than one house if they can afford to, there is no scandal about it - the scandal is in the eye of the beholder who comes from outside the society, not from those in it.
You’re calling it by a label, others call it by another - but the people I know in those societies don’t speak much English, señor.
I’ve never quite understood what draws all of those groups together…well, apart from events like this:
But yes, that makes sense to me. The few poly people i know are from those subcultures.
supervenusfreak and I have an open relationship, which is open to polyamory, as well. We have had a third person who we were dating together as a triad, but he had issues in his life and we broke up with him while still in the “visiting” stage (i.e., before he moved in with us).
Otherwise, we have (both separate and together) liaisons with people, sometimes long-time friends, sometimes strangers we’ve taken a physical liking to and who return that liking, sometimes at home and sometimes at events which are more or less designed to have liaisons at. If, at some point, those liaisons become something more with someone, we’d take it under consideration whether we’d want to pursue a romantic relationship with that person. If it’s only one of us that feels that way, that’s fine, too. But we are each others’ primary…that hasn’t changed in six years, and if it does, we’ll deal with that.
Gay male, 38 (and gay male, 44)