Monogamy is for idiots

The BBQ Pit
81

Riiiight, because I’ve been so completely pwned in this thread. :rolleyes:

I’m assuming you met online. How long had you been communicating when you had the above conversation?

That’s a pretty natural statement to come from a feminist mostly preoccupied with the notion that men only want to keep women out of positions of power. The Economist, meanwhile, says,

The more micro you go, the less this view holds, but on the macro scale we’re talking about here, I think it absolutely holds - and I still believe that more men are likely to want multiple sex partners than women. We can even debate whether the differences between the sexes are cultural or biological, but really, the reason doesn’t matter; the reality is, men and women do behave differently.

How many years of that 12 years passed before you realized it wasn’t right for you? If you didn’t have any other relationships the entire 12 years, I guess that means that there was a period when you did think Herself and only Herself was right for you?

I think YWTF touched on this already but…I don’t read anything in that paragraph that suggests poly is the answer to your dreams - I see it as, you were in a relationship with someone that simply wasn’t right for you. In fact, it seems to me that even poly isn’t going to work for you - if you’re always going to be pre-occupied with new romances, you’re always going to be bored no matter how many people you hook up with. You’ll never learn to appreciate the person in front of you.

This is why some people (myself included, BTW) think that poly people tend to take the lazy way through relationships. I mean, think about the main stereotype of the young immature jock in university - a string of never-ending conquests, a bunch of women on the go, one after another, never being serious with any of them. What makes your approach any different? Most people (myself included) believe that as people mature they learn how to have deeper, more meaningful relationships with one person at a time.

I’m not sure there was actually an answer in there.

Are ‘community responsibilities’ the norm for most poly folk? Actually, what about you? Do you follow this view? Do you expect women you hook up with to be partially responsible to the ‘community’ you belong to? What would you do if two women got pregnant? How familiar are you with modern poly thinking, for that matter? I mean, you’ve been completely out of the poly scene for over a decade, right?

82

Oh, right, because handing out some toys will COMPLETELY FUCKING CANCEL OUT THE EFFECTS OF THE ENTIRETY OF THE REST OF CULTURE.

Retard.

83

And plenty of other people think you’re wrong. I think that your concern-trolling for pregnant women involved in these situations is reprehensible… but I’m sure people think I’m wrong.
I consider myself poly even though I haven’t had an “outside” relationship in years and years. My husband and I have been married for almost 18 years and still not only love, but like the hell out of each other. How’s your relationship?

84

Right, because baby boys and girls in the 70s were soooo under the influence by the entirety of culture. :rolleyes:

Retard yourself.

85

Damn good, and our relationship doesn’t need qualifiers like ‘and I haven’t slept with anyone outside my marriage for years and years’.

Notice, no one has yet to answer my questions. You all wouldn’t be side-stepping them on purpose would you?

86

My relationship didn’t need the qualifier; I did, you mook. I’m sure there are other qualifiers on your relationship… and anyone else’s. The fact that the qualifiers are different doesn’t necessarily make them better or worse, though.

You don’t want to know why you might not be right; you just want everyone to know how right you are. Fine. You’re right. Does it feel good? I’m right too, and it doesn’t feel any different from when I’m right about anything else which is COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE.

87

In my experience, there are a lot of poly people who are immature about their romantic relationships, but no more so than there are monogamous people who are immature about their romantic relationships. I mean, really, how many monogamous people do we have on these boards posting about psycho exes, infidelity, relationships gone to shit, etc.?

Also, what is equal is not necessarily fair. If, for instance, my husband wants to sleep with other women and I don’t mind him sleeping with other women, but he doesn’t want me to sleep with other men and I don’t want to sleep with other men, then it would be perfectly fair for him to be allowed to sleep around while I remained monogamous, even if that’s an unequal arrangement.

88

The questions about what poly people do if two women in a relationship with the same man get pregnant? I can’t speak for others, but I haven’t attempted an answer because it’s going to entirely depend on that group of people and how their relationship is structured. Do they both consider that man to be their primary partner, or does one of the women have a different primary partner? Do they all live together? Are the pregnancies planned or unplanned?

I can tell you a little about the poly family I shared a table with at a wedding reception recently. They consisted of a husband, his wife, his girlfriend, his two daughters by his wife, and a baby by his girlfriend whom they’d left at home with a babysitter. They all lived together and coparented.

89

You’re right . . . they don’t. But, they all, every single one of them still come with that exact same risk.

What you’re kidding yourself about is that this possibility for an extra-relationship bond, physical or emotional, doesn’t exist in non-polyamorous relationships.

In order to enter this debate fairly, you need to concede the following:

a) All relationships carry the risk that a person in the relationship might sleep with someone else, or fall in love with someone else.

b) In AHunter3’s OP, he made it clear that his girlfriend said she’d leave him if he did so.

c) AHunter3 then remained faithful to her for 12 years, at which point the relationship seems to have fizzled for any number of reasons.

d) Being polyamorous had nothing whatsoever to do with the relationship ending as presented in the OP.
. . . I have a girlfriend I love very much. I don’t sleep with other people, because it would hurt her and our relationship. It has very little to do with any label I might or might not use to define my preferred relationship status. If I had full permission from my girlfriend to pursue different sorts of relationships with other people, maybe I would.

And, frankly, I know plenty of supposedly monogamous people who have actually cheated on partners, you know, the real kind of cheating, where one person is lying about it to the other? Why you have such a hard-on for polyamory based on a thread about a monogamous relationship is beyond me.

90

Possibility for extra-relationship bonds? Of course, the possibility certainly exisits for any couple.

But poly relationships and mono relationships most certianly do *not *have the same risk of someone sleeping with someone else while in the relationship. Unless you believe that 100% of monogamous couples are automatically unfaithful, which I most certainly do not believe.

Don’t project your inability to commit to one person (be it due to a need for constant new conquests, boredom with one person, or whatever) on the rest of us.

I hope she doesn’t read these boards… But seriously, this I just don’t get. What, apart from the ability to have sex with new people, does she not provide to your relationship that you need? Is it just wanting to look at another pair of breasts or something? If you’re happy with her and the relationship…why would you consider wanting sex with someone else? And don’t say that ‘it’s not all about sex’, because if sex isn’t involved, your relationship certainly isn’t stopping you from having, you know, friends.

I resent the implication (by AHunter and others in this thread) that polyamory is the only ‘honest’ way to have a relationship, and the implied view that monogamous people are ‘only kidding themselves’.

91

Who - in this thread - has said that?

92

No, 100% of monogamous relationships are not unfaithful. Nor are all/many/most polyamorous people incapable of being faithful. What you’re missing is that if the relationship agreement is, “be faithful or the relationship is over,” it doesn’t matter what kind of amory you call yourself. A polyamorous person is more than able to be faithful, as exhibited by AHunter.

Woah, buddy. Who said anything about an inability to commit. Committed is what I am. That’s what promising to not sleep around and so forth means. I am happy and content in that choice that I’ve made, and am happy within the boundaries of my relationship. Don’t project your fantasy of what the perfect, right, and true feelings for a relationship are on the rest of us. You’re living in a fantasy world.

I’d happily show her my post. (hehe, show her my ‘post’). Um, sex is fun. People are fun. Sex for the first time with someone can be exciting. Sex in a different way can be exciting; not everybody does everything the same, you know.

And, even on the non-sex aspect, hey, it feels good to be needed. It feels good to be emotionally intimate with someone, to share secrets, to learn about each other, to have ‘firsts’ with a person. Maybe it would be nice to have some of those firsts again, and recapture those feelings.

But really, if you are in all honesty baffled at how a person could possibly be sexually attracted (or intimately attracted without the sex) to a person when he or she is already in a relationship with someone, then I don’t think we can make any progress in this discussion. Just know that just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it isn’t true for a large majority of the population.

93

I find polyamorous theory and philosophy fascinating because it’s approach to issues of jealousy is so different from the mainstream culture’s. The idea that my partner’s romantic engagement to someone else is not necessarily a threat to my relationship with my partner is a pretty radical idea given our cultural constructs. We’re taught that feelings of jealousy are desirable within a relationship and that we should obey them –women should get upset if their boyfriend even looks at another woman, and men should get upset if another man looks at their girlfriend. I love that polyamory rejects the idea that we are subservient to our emotions without invalidating them, either. Jealousy stems from fear and can be overcome if the root cause of the fear can be identified and corrected. To me, facing unwanted emotions and working with your partner to get past them is more mature than letting them control your relationship. I am still not – and may never be –at a point where I would be comfortable with my fiancé having a girlfriend, nor would I have another boyfriend, because both my fiancé and I spend all our time with each other and have since we started dating. We’re both time-intensive people and I don’t think either of us could handle having a second romantic partner and still feel that we had enough time for each other.

In short, I think the argument that polyamory is inherently immature is absurd. Good polyamorous relationships require high levels of communication, self-awareness, and emotional maturity that are often under-developed in monogamous relationships.

94

I find this reasoning kind of backwards. The consequences of a thing are part of what determines if you want to do it or not. Not wanting to do a thing because it has bad consequences is still not wanting to do the thing.

95

Unless they were raised in complete, total, and literal isolation, yes, they were, shitdick.

I bet you also think that we could solve racism in the U.S. by giving all Black people blue contacts.

96

Why are you wasting your time on internet boards, when you could be out buying a season pass at your local brothel?

97

Looks like it’s gonna be a busy day for you–better get crack-a-lackin’ on this! :smiley:

98

Wow, what an interesting site! Coming from a kinky perspective, it looks very familiar, except that the reasoning behind the relationship structure it discusses is “this is what God wants” instead of “this is what we want.” (That, and the fact that the authors think all relationships should follow their model.)

99

It’s also the statement that says that polyamory is more honest than monogamy. Which is fucking stupid. I’ve never understood this idea that people want to have sex with everyone they are attracted to.

I absolutely do not want to have sex with anyone until I am in a committed, monogamous relationship with them (preferably marriage, which adds the weight of law to the commitment). It doesn’t matter how attracted to someone I am–I do not want to have sex with them.

I honestly do have a problem with people in monogamous relationships that want to have sex with other people, but don’t out of the commitment. You shouldn’t be making the commitment in the first place if you want to have sex with others. You’re lying to yourself, saying you’d rather be in a committed relationship than have sex with multiple people. Very clearly you’d rather be in a relationship where you were committed, but were allowed to have sex on the side.

If that is what you are doing, then I would agree that polyamory, or, at least, the situation described by AHunter, is the more honest approach. But, again, to assume this is always the case is itself the same problem poly people have with their detractors: a lack of acceptance of feelings you don’t personally have.

IOW, it’s fucking stupid–nearly literally.

100

You aren’t the typical young adult male.