Diogenes, I don’t think that being gay is a choice, but what if it was? Would you instantly become intolerant of gay people? I don’t engage in swinging. I don’t think it’s a great way to live one’s life. The only people I know who are swingers are a gay couple I used to room with. I think it would have been stupid to stop being friends with them because their sexual habits didn’t prevent them in any way from being great friends and roommates to me. I feel that the op might regret judging her friends too harshly for one odd habit that doesn’t harm her in any tangible way, if her friends are otherwise still valuable friends. Maybe their company isn’t worth the awkwardness, that’s the op’s choice.
Transsexuals may not choose the way they feel about their gender, but surely they choose to have the surgery. Some people choose to take hormones and not have surgery. Some people might have issues with gender identity and not have surgery or take hormones.
I never said people should be tolerant and accepting of anyone, after all I am evil. But if someone prides themselves on being tolerant and accepting of people who have different lifestyles but aren’t harming anyone, I don’t see a particular reason this should exclude swingers.
I will also repeat that it is often considered impolite to perform sexual activities in front of other people, and the op is quite within her rights to politely ask the couples in question to tone it down a little.
You’re partially right Dio, polyamory is not a sexual orientation and it is something they do; but you’re wrong to assume it’s just “having sex.”
For the record, polyamory is “the philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time.” You don’t know that this threesome doesn’t possess a genuine emotional connection any more that I know they do. Even the OP has copped that this info is coming secondhand. None of us yet know the situation and it would be prudent to refrain from making judgments until we know the facts.
Though I do agree with you that while the OP doesn’t need to approve of their lifestyle if she truly doesn’t agree with it, she could be throwing away a friendship over nothing but unfamiliarity.
I don’t pride myself on being tolerant, and swinging isn’t a “lifestyle,” it’s just fucking lots of people. Parading their tricks around in front of other people’s homes is immature and gross, and I don’t feel any obligation to be tolerant of it in front of my kids.
I like spinach but I don’t like celery. There’s no biological component to that (let’s say). That means my likes/dislikes are not valid. Now let’s say I live somewhere where it’s socially unacceptable to not eat celery. Guess I’m out of luck.
If consenting adults choose to engage in behavior that is not harming anyone outside the group, then why should it matter whether it’s biology or a choice?
There’s a big huge difference between swinging and polyamory. I’ve known several triads who were together long term, each of them in one committed relationship that happened to include more than two people. Swinging is totally different. From the OP it sounds like the people in question are of the former persuasion.
Diogenes I didn’t mean you prided yourself on tolerance and acceptance. I was under the impression that the op viewed these attributes as morally positive. If I was wrong and made assumptions I apologize. What’s wrong with fucking lots of people or having an open relationship? Presuming you do it safely, it’s consenting and you aren’t being deceptive. I’m not in an open relationship. It’s not because I think doing so is immoral, but because my girl and I would both get jealous in such a situation, and being with each other and not hurting each other is more important to us than fucking other people. The op has said that she’s not worried about the influence this will have on her kids, so what’s really so wrong about what this couple are doing?
I’m a social libertarian and don’t care what consenting adults do outside my home, but the question was about what we would want to accept IN our home. I’m not going to humor someone else’s stunted, immature sexual psychodramas by pretending that a “polyamorous” orientation is a real thing or that these are real relationships deserving of respect. To me, it’s the same thing as a 40 year old friend bringing over a an 18 year-old girlfriend and expecting me to take it seriously. It’s the same kind of self-absorbed, adolescent acting-out.
You shouldn’t feel ashamed of your feelings. Feelings aren’t choices, they are what they are, and should be accepted for what they are (though, having done that, if one feels one’s feelings are incompatible with one’s expectations on oneself, it is certainly reasonable to seek to change those feelings). Only actions can meaningfully be assigned ethical value.
And regarding actions, there’s no even remotely polite way to tell someone their girlfriend/boyfriend isn’t welcome to a function where girlfriends/boyfriends are generally welcome. They might accept it if they’re huge chumps who consider their friends’ opinions on their relationships more important than those relationships, but most likely you would lose friends.
The question is whether you want to change their behaviour or your feelings. And if you do want to change your feelings, it might be a good idea to interact with their new* SOs. If you can see them as people they’re having relationships with, rather than as “playmates”, it might help.
*) Incidentally, do you know how new these relationships are? They only started bringing them to social functions recently, but are the relationships older?
So I’m trying to understand why polyamory is morally contemptible. As far as I understand, monogamy isn’t exactly the natural order of things. Throughout history there have been couples who have multiple sex partners. Marriage just happens to be a convenient way to organize society. Right?
Unfortunately you can not dictate who is invited to someone else’s party … so you have to decide to suck it up, or invite just your friends out to something separately later.
I personally would find it a bit tacky to call Dave and Sue and tell them you dont mind if they invite Bob and Carol, but please do not invite Ted and Alice … unless you are perhaps out for coffee with Dave or Sue, and can figure out some way of delicately mentioning that you really love Bob and Carol, but the whole Ted and Alice part of their relationship makes you extremely uncomfortable, but you wish you could still go to parties with Bob and Carol without Ted and Alice tagging along.
Unfortunately, the way the sexual mores are changing tends to mean you are going to have to start accepting things you are not personally comfortable with if you want to do things socially, see all the people who have to put up with gay couples. Would it bother you if you knew Bob and Carol, and he divorced her to marry Ted? Or Carol married Alice?
I’ve known poly couples for years - and lived in a poly house as a while (I was a renter, not a participant). For me it isn’t a comfortable situation, but like you, I recognize its my own discomfort and stick it in the “well, it floats their boat” bucket. I ignore it as much as I can - which since none of my own close friends are poly (its friends of friends) is easily done. It does get more comfortable with time - sort of like someone showing up with a facial tattoo - eventually its an oddity that fades into “yeah, I know.”
I’m finding it interesting that “tolerance” is being treated as an absolute value – that if you’re accepting of X, Y, and Z, you’re an asshole for not being okay with A, B, or C. I am a pretty damned tolerant person, and yet there are certain things that I’m not okay with. Regardless of whether my “not-okayness” in any particular case is a moral judgment, an emotional discomfort, or a political opinion, I should be allowed to be not-okay with another person’s choices, and I should be allowed to decide for myself how much or how little I want to interact with that person given his or her choices.
This is what Miss Manners would say as well. And I should know, I’ve read almost everything she wrote, great stuff when you’re a former hippie kid and kept in the dark about bourgeois stuff like “manners”, like I was).
The reaso no-one should make out with anyone in front of others is that such behavior is by its very nature private. Doing private stuff in front of others amounts to saying that they either aren’t right there, or shouldn’t be there, or that you really don’t give a damn that they are in the same room as you. And that is why it is rude. The polyamory thing has nothing to do with that.
You might like to read this thread, for an insight in what might go on inside the mind of such public affection-showers.
I think that’s a load, actually, but it isn’t the sex that I object to, it’s being asked to take a three-way seriously as a relationship. It’s not a relationship.
It doesn’t sound like the are making out at social functions - they are holding hands. Or cuddling. I’ll go to a friends house and sit close next to my husband. Or touch his back when I’m standing next to him.
I figured I’d stop by this thread, as one of those happily married polyamorous folk.
Personally, I try to follow the social rules of wherever I’m going to be–that means that a fair bit of the time, I’m pretending to be monogamous. We also had the good sense to talk to friends of ours about it and gauge their comfort level. Fortunately for me, almost all of my friends are fine with it and accepting of it–and the ones who weren’t were the kind of people who created enough (to use Dio’s terminology) sexual psychodramas to choke an elephant, but somehow that was okay because none of them were married.
Bullshit, says I.
Anyway, I personally think I’d need to know more about how these folks are behaving relative to the rest of the partygoers to know whether they’re being inappropriate–at my new year’s parties, for example, my group of friends is sufficiently close that there’s generally a lot of random cuddling and plopping into random people’s laps of whatever gender if the seating runs out. On the other hand, that kinda shit would be absolutely uncool at, say, my wife’s Rosh Hoshanah party.
I personally think that, as much as they have an obligation to work with their friend group to ease into acceptance of this sort of thing, Dio is somewhat wrong in that you have as much of an obligation (the strength of which varies based on how much you care about the friendship) to meet them halfway on this. Many people who describe themselves as “polyamorous” are legitimately looking for commitment, just spread across multiple other people–granted, there are some out there who should more properly be called “swingers” if they’re actively avoiding commitment with anyone but their primary relationship. You equally have a right to be offended if they’re being gratuitous about displays of public affection, but from what you’ve described they’re keeping it as low as it can get and still be noticeable at all.
It’s also unacceptable, in my opinion, for them to pull what seems to be the relatively common behaviors of either looking down on monogamists or trying to “recruit” people–although, it’s equally common in my experience for people to perceive that when it’s not at all intended.
Diogenes, I’m not sure if I want to hijack this thread here, but I honestly want to know why your definition of “relationship” is more important than theirs?
Would it make a difference if they (like, for example, my uncle, his wife, and their husband) had been in a stable triad relationship (owning property in joint, etc) for a few decades?