Open marriage, vunerability or fucking stupidity?

The BBQ Pit
101

Yoif.

I tend to react to someone arguing that polyamory is “more emotionally evolved” much the same way as I’d react to someone saying being gay is “more emotionally evolved”. And the monogamy-superiority folks strike me as about as clued as “heterosexuality is the real natural way” nitwits. It’s just another point of orientation or choice-space. No big moral whoop. Some people are straight, some people are gay, some people are bi; some people are monogamous, some people are polyamorous or polysexual, and some people are switch. Populations have wide variety.

Me, my husband and I have been together for eight years, and open for the whole time. (We figured that when we were going to be long-distance from each other for college, it would be stupid to require monogamy; besides, if we met someone that made us want to leave the other, we’d rather know now than later. We both met people. None of them threatened our relationship in any way.) My other primary and his wife have been together for eight years, and open for the last two and a half.

I have secondary relationships; none of them are the sort of relationships that could be a marriage in the first place, but since I’m not trying to force them into that role or drop them as failures, they persist. My husband doesn’t have heirarchy work in his head, so he just has relationships, not primary, not secondary. Not sure about my other primary; he dithers on this. His wife is polyfidelitous – only has relationships that are marriage-equivalent.
I firmly believe that “to be faithful” means “to keep faith”, to not break one’s promises, and someone who presumes that those promises necessarily include sexual or emotional exclusivity is missing out on the idea that people should pick what commitments they make and make the ones that matter to them, that they can uphold.

(Anyone watch soaps? I did when I was a kid. All these people making promises they knew they couldn’t uphold, because other people figured that those were the promises they had to make to be valid. Of course, if they stuck to the promises they could keep faith on, there wouldn’t be so much sturm und drang to make for drrrrrrrrama.)
To a person who was asking about children in such relationships, I know of one extended poly network that has polyfolk for two generations at this point; I don’t know if it was the poly daughter or the monogamous daughter who recently had a kid, but I think it’s a bit early to evaluate the sexual orientation of the infant in question. There’s also a four-person family with children that has a website at http://ourlittlequad.com/. My family has yet to produce children.

102

I didn’t say you were less emotionally "involved, " I said emotionally “evolved.” Several posters on the first page said that people involved in open marriages are more emotionally evolved that those in traditional marriages.

And it sounds like you aren’t committed to one person. You’re married, but you mention all the relationships you’ve had while married. That doesn’t sound very committed to me.

To be more emotionally evolved, I think one would have to have the maturity to turn away from an extramarital relationship and stay with your spouse.
Being married and having sexual relationships in addition to your spouse seems immature, at best.

I was questioning why everyone seems to think the people involved in an open marriage are somehow better than the people in a traditional marriage; i.e., why are they more emotionally evolved?
I just don’t buy it. To be truly committed to one person seems more mature.

103

If a particular relationship doesn’t include a commitment to emotional or sexual exclusivity, the lack of emotional or sexual exclusivity seems to me to have utterly no bearing on whether or not that relationship is “committed”.

Attempting to insist that a relationship is not “committed” because it does not contain things that the people in that relationship aren’t interested in having as a part of their relationship seems pretty fundamentally disrespectful of those people’s ability to make their own choices and evaluate what <i>they</i> want in a relationship.

I tend to figure people who aren’t involved with me have a lot of gall telling me that my relationships aren’t real, valid, or committed because I happen to not fit their preconceptions. It’s pretty arrogant to say that my commitments are invalid because they don’t fit some external prejudice that I have no particular interest in serving.

Where’s maturity? I’d say: in knowing what sorts of relationships one wants, negotiating to get them honestly and fairly, and keeping those promises. What those agreements are is icing; I think it’s irrelevant. Pick monogamy if that works for you and whoever you’re involved with; pick polyamory if that works for you and whoever you’re involved with; have kids or don’t; live in Topeka or don’t; quit your job to follow your lifelong dream of playing jazz in clubs or don’t; convert to Buddhism or don’t; it’s no skin off my nose. But knowing what you want, and getting it without doing harm to others: that’s maturity to me. Privation for the sake of privation I prefer to call “gratuitous martyrdom”.

I’d tend to think it’s pretty immature to adopt a relationship structure that doesn’t suit my life because some third party had the notion that they had a better idea what my needs and desires are than anyone who is actually emotionally involved with me.

104

"Being married and having sexual relationships in addition to your spouse seems immature, at best. "

Everyone keeps focusing on the sex. Why is that? I call them romantic relationships.

There is a lot more to commitment than sex. A lot of people don’t seem to be able to comprehend this. Is sex really THAT important in your marriage? Isn’t that a bit shallow, that monogamous sex is the be-all, end-all, and defining point of a marriage?

105

“I was questioning why everyone seems to think the people involved in an open marriage are somehow better than the people in a traditional marriage; i.e., why are they more emotionally evolved?”

I’ve seen several people go out of their WAY to make it perfectly clear that they do not feel “open marriage” is right for everyone, and that each person has their own comfort level, and that is neither right, nor wrong; neither better, nor worse.

Calling people in “open marriages” immature is pretty fucking petty and judgemental. I’m not telling you to be in an open marriage. I’ve never said one is better or worse than another. It looks to me like (for the most part) the people in “open marriages” are defending themselves against the people who are calling them immature, or immoral, or what have you.

Lilairen made some very good, well-put points:

“I firmly believe that “to be faithful” means “to keep faith”, to not break one’s promises, and someone who presumes that those promises necessarily include sexual or emotional exclusivity is missing out on the idea that people should pick what commitments they make and make the ones that matter to them, that they can uphold.”

To me, this means that if you are with someone and both of you agree that sexual or emotional exclusivity is not a requirement for your remationship (which is not unheard-of; merely not in your realm of experience), then by becoming sexually or emotionally involved with another, you are not being AT ALL FAITHLESS.

As a side note…most of the poly people I have known or heard of would not DREAM of helping someone BREAK FAITH with his or her spouse.

"It’s pretty arrogant to say that my commitments are invalid because they don’t fit some external prejudice that I have no particular interest in serving. "

Beautifully put.

“Where’s maturity? I’d say: in knowing what sorts of relationships one wants, negotiating to get them honestly and fairly, and keeping those promises.”

Also beautifully put, as is the rest of the post from that point on.

If you and your spouse feel that monogamy works best for you, go for it.
If you and your spouse feel that polyamory works best for you, go for it.
If you and your spouse feel that swinging works best for you, go for it.

As long as people aren’t LYING to each other, and people are making their best effort to keep from hurting each other (physically, mentally, emotionally AND spiritually)…how can it be wrong or bad or immoral or immature?

The guy in the OP lied to the OP’s friend, in not telling her that he was married…that’s a Bad Thing. However, I can think of plenty of things I didn’t tell my hubman until we’d been dating for a couple of months. “I’m bisexual.” A pretty damned big deal. A total deal-breaker for some people. Not one for him. “I’m in an open marriage.” A pretty damned big deal. A deal-breaker for MOST people. Not, apparently, one for the OP’s friend.

It takes ALL KINDS.

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This was my main question. Why is someone who involved in an open marriage considered to be more “emotionally evolved” than a person who is in a traditional marriage?
The phrase “more emotionally evolved” was used as a compliment, as if everyone in a traditional monogamous relationship is somehow a lesser person.
Why?
Just because they don’t get jealous? Why is that better?

Why is someone more "emotionally evolved just because they are in an open marriage?
Just because they can deal with having their spouse be with other people, why does that make them somehow better evolved?

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“Why is someone who involved in an open marriage considered to be more “emotionally evolved” than a person who is in a traditional marriage?”

As far as I can tell, only one person even brought that up. You seem to be spreading that out to say that is how everyone who has responded feels. I certainly don’t, and I don’t know anyone else who does.

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although i recently got shafted by a polyamour and personally find polyamory primitive at best (even the word is ridiculous… as if it’s competing for shelf space against “free love”… face it, it’s essentially the same thing, it just has a sparkling new pseudo-intellectual name to help it sell to all the kids who are certain they’re much hipper than the people ahead of them), as well as unsavory (and i’ve just got to assume it’s at least .000000000000000000000000000000001% riskier than monogamy, even though any poly thumper would probably try to tell me that it’s actually 23 times safer or something idiotic like that), i would like to throw my $.02 in and ask:

what’s the point in debating the relative merits of a lifestyle? if one person on Earth is into something (assuming whatever it is doesn’t involve hurting someone or something, e.g., mutually consentual polyamory), it’s got to be valid. we’re not talking about molesting dead baby seals here, we’re talking about adult humans having their way with multiple partners who, by definition, are well aware of the situation.

there shouldn’t even be a debate at all. it’s a non-issue. now, handing out free advice is one thing, but arguing about the validity of something as trivial as free love (nyah!) is just foolish.

i’m going to go paint my nose blue without first consulting my priest. anybody got a problem with that?

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…instead of “vulnerability” or “fucking stupidity,” how about “none of your fucking business”?

If someone decides to open their marriage and it’s not your marriage, that is none of your business. If someone decides to have a relationship with a married person who’s in an open marriage, that’s none of your business. For that matter, if someone gets involved with a married person who isn’t in an open marriage, that’s none of your business either!

If a friend comes to you grousing about or looking for advice about her relationship(s), she’s not asking you or giving you blanket permission to go posting about her life on a public message board. I can understand someone who blogs about their friends’ problems because that touches the blogger’s life, but what you are doing here is looking for moral support for your being a fucking busybody. It’s inexcusable, and the only thing you could have done to make this worse would be to post her name and contact info. I think you owe your so-called “best friend” an apology – I say “so-called” because if MY best friend did what you’ve done to ME, she wouldn’t be my best friend anymore.

As for the rest of everybody here who’s been clucking their tongues and shaking their heads over that woman’s life, you’re just as much the busybodies. What you do with your relationships is your business, but do NOT expect other people to live like you do. Everybody doesn’t have the same needs, desires, or even the same taste in people… everybody doesn’t have the same criteria for attraction or the same sexual orientation or even the same opinions about childbearing and family values. Why the hell does anyone here expect us all to have the same opinions on whether or not we should have multiple lovers/ partners/ spouses? Who died and made any of you king or queen anyway?

FWIW, I’m probably tossing pearls before swine (wait, what do I mean “probably”?), but let me offer my OWN experience. This isn’t any of your business either, any of you, but I figure it will be useful as a working example of why most of you anti-poly types are full of… well, you know. That noxious substance turning your eyes brown.

Yes, I’m polyamorous. I don’t go around wearing a giant label on my forehead, but that’s my lifestyle. I have a boyfriend here in Indiana, B (and live with him and his wife), and another boyfriend in Ohio, M, who’s also married. In both cases the wives are aware and in M’s case the wife has other lovers.

I practice what is known in poly circles as the “primary/ secondary” model of polyamory. In this case I am a secondary partner to both M and B. This doesn’t mean I am not worth anything to them, it merely signifies that I don’t have as much of a history with either of them – in this instance we’re not that much different from a monogamous couple taking their time to get to know one another before they consider themselves “really serious” or “marriage material.”

I don’t have a primary partner myself, but I don’t know anybody aside from my two boyfriends at this time that I’d feel comfortable partnering with, much less have enough history with anybody that I’d want to be that serious with them. At this point in my life I’m not ready for that anyway. I don’t want to be alone, and I do love both my boyfriends, and I have just the right level of involvement with both of them at this time that I am not alone, but not overwhelmed emotionally either.

I got burned more when I thought I could be monogamous and I had to deal with the guy wanting to “choose” between me and someone else. Honestly, that hurts so much and I don’t know why you mono people put up with it. It’s like love becomes some kind of fucking popularity contest where you either win it all or lose it all, no room for compromise, PLUS you end up living a lie when the person still loves you (just not as much as the person they chose over you) but pretends they don’t so they don’t upset the person they ended up with.

For the record, I don’t think polyamory is more evolved than monogamy. All other things being equal and everybody in the relationship knowing what they want and getting it, I think both relationship styles are equally evolved. What I think is more evolved is the mere act of figuring out what you want in a relationship, being HONEST about that, and not being willing to settle for anything less. Oddly enough, I see more of this among poly people than I do monogamous folks.

But… That is the root of the best friend’s problem in the original post, IF she really is wanting more out of her boyfriend than he’s willing to give her. And in this case you CAN’T blame him for her problems. If she’s willingly living in denial and hoping he’ll change his mind, she needs to take a good long hard look in the mirror and come to terms with that and move on. His lifestyle has NOTHING to do with it.

Just my opinion, and that and a buck can buy you a coffee at a truck stop.

(P.S. To those in this thread who claimed they “got burned” by polyamory, no you didn’t, you got burned by stupid immature people who wanted to play mind games with you. Again, don’t blame the lifestyle, blame the person, and blame the RIGHT person… and ask yourself how much control you had over the situation, and how much hurt YOU could have prevented. In other words, Grow Tha Fuck Up.)

110

A not-quite-irrelevent side note:
It is possible that the husband and wife in question would have no problem with marrying their respective lovers except for the tiny little fact that plural marriages, of any kind, are illegal in this country.

111

Err… no it isn’t. I thought we’d explained that already.

112

Note that I quoted “amazing”, but not cretin for a reason. In your previous post:

Nuff said?

and then in a subsequent post:

So what you are describing isn’t really monogamy, in a technical sense, but serial monogamy - having only a single mate for a given period of time. Serial monogamy is just a culturally acceptable revision of polygyny.

But even so-called serial monogamists tend to be hypocrites. One partner “cheats” in over 50% of all so-called “monogamous” relationships (granted, more men than women). If you nor your spouse has ever cheated on their partner, chances are good that your neighbors have.

So because you are consumed by the “jealousy monster”, and not wired to handle it, open-marriage is bullshit? And I’m judgemental? Got it.

So again, you make my point, while missing it altogether. The fact that your friend will not build a family with this man is because he doesn’t want children, which she has known for some time. The fact that his wife doesn’t want children is an additional but otherwise irrelevent fact (as Dangerosa pointed out). This issue isn’t about lifestyle at all, it is simply typical everyday relationship drama. The open-marriage angle is just your hook to “not understand it”. Your right - you just don’t get it.

Because they have a greater capacity to love? The idea of polyamory is to build loving relationships with more than just one person.

This idea of evolution and monogamy, or sexual jealousy, is a load of crap. Humans did not evolve to be monogamous. Monogamy is against our biology, our nature, but imposed by our “morality”.

Most all humans are born with the capacity for sexual and emotional jealousy. But that capacity is activated by the environment and societal norms in which we are raised. Polyamorous folks are not more emotionally evolved. They are less constrained by societal norms, and generally more open minded. They are more likely to assert their nature than repress their feelings for the sake of conformity.

Clearly, you just don’t get it, either. Polyamory is not like your marriage vows “forsaking all others”. Do you claim that as a high moral goal?

Perhaps I could agree with you if their behaviors matched their ideals. They don’t, and I don’t.

Huh? Even if you love “other people”? I think it takes a more emotionally mature individual to accept that ones mate may find more joy and fulfillment with additional relationships, than the selfish position of - “you must forsake all others for me”. How petty.

Seems more mature, in what way?

Because jealousy is a negative base emotion, with no constructive purpose. Why would someone need to explain that to you?

If two people desire to commit themselves, emotionally and sexually, to each other exclusively for life, and then are able to follow through in keeping their commitments (not just in appearance), then I say, more power to them. But I don’t think that makes them “better” humans. Actually, I would find them quite odd, since such arrangements cannot be found throughout human history.

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Nitpick #1: “Polygyny” means “many women.” A heterosexual woman or gay man (or bisexual person whose distribution happened to fall that way) who was serially monogamous would be practicing “polyandry”. The sex-neutral term is “polygamy”, meaning “many marriages” (as “monogamy” means “one marriage”).

Nitpick #2: Some people are “naturally” monogamous, inasmuch as when they are involved with one person, they do not develop attractions to other people. Such people have an entirely valid existence. Other people are, for one reason or another, simply not suited to polyamory.

Nitpick #3: Being polyamorous does not indicate anything about having a “greater capacity to love”; it indicates, if anything, taking a certain set of choices about how to express that love. Much as choosing to be monogamous does not provide evidence through exclusivity that that relationship is genuine and valid; merely that a certain set of choices about how to express that validity have been made.

Nitpick #4: Polyfolk are just as likely to be closed-minded nitwits as anyone else, and it is not uncommon for some to be so on the subject of monogamy.

Nitpick #5: I find jealousy to be a very useful emotion, as it lets me know when I’m being ripped off, which is something that can happen in any sort of relationship context.

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Lilairen, I accept your nitpicks #2 through #4. I also accept your definition of “polygyny”, and stand by my statement that serial monogamy, as practiced in our culture (American in particular, but “Western” generally), is simply a culturally acceptable revision of polygyny.

I accept that some people are “naturally” monogamous, I just believe that number to be exceptionally small, based on human behavior across long periods of time and across many different cultures. I accept that other people (many if not most, actually) are not suited for polyamory, but I believe those reasons are cultural and not natural.

I accept that being polyamorous does not indicate having a greater capacity to love, but a choice to actualize that expression across more individuals, which gives them greater capacity to express their love.

I accept that polyfolk are just as likely to be closed minded nitwits as anyone else. If your additional comment about “some” on the subject of monogamy related to other statements I made, call them out.

Please elaborate on your nitpick #5. I did not choose my words wisely, but allow me to clarify. Emotions aren’t “good” or “bad”, they are innate. Reactions to those emotions described in this thread to (emotional and sexual) jealousy have been self-centered and often self-righteous. Such reactions don’t have to be petty.

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Actually, I retract this statement in my last post:

I don’t believe that. Certainly, there are plenty of polyfolk that are closed minded nitwits. However, I believe that polyfolk generally are more open-minded. The fact that they have contravened societal norms serves as evidence. I offer no proof. Same with homosexuals, and other individuals that choose to pursue “alternative lifestyles”. To accept themselves, they are forced to open their minds to other alternatives without judgement.

116

If people are dating multiple men serially, they /can’t/ be practicing polygyny, in a culturally acceptable form or otherwise. :wink: It’s just not what the word means. (It’s the same root as “gynecologist”.) I’m a straight chick; polygyny is just not in the cards for me, no matter what my relationship structure. (It is, however, applicable to both of my partners.)

I think the idea of “jealousy is bad” among polyfolk is rooted in two places. One is the pop-culture idea that jealousy is proof of Twoo Wuv, that if one can’t bear the idea of a partner having a relationship with someone else, that just goes to show that it’s the Real Thing. I think that this notion is sufficiently twisted (and, honestly, sufficiently sick) to inspire a whole lot of kneejerk anti-jealousy sentiment.

The other one is a lot trickier for me to verbalise, so rather than say what I think it is, I’ll state my axioms and build up to it. I find that my experience of jealousy comes when I feel that something which has been legitimately given to me is not given to me and instead given to someone else. (Hence my statement that jealousy lets me know when I’m being ripped off.)

Example: When I was having trouble in one of my relationships because a partner was not spending much couple-time with me, and I saw him showing supportive affection to someone else, I was jealous; he was denying me this thing that he knew I needed and giving it to That Other Person. (And, in fact, we resolved that without ever having to address his actions with the other person in question, simply by him providing me with supportive affection. Which was fine by me; I didn’t care about the actions themselves, so much as the disparity.)

So my belief about the prevalence of negativity about jealousy comes about because of the people who believe that they should be given sexual/emotional exclusivity even in cases where they have specifically not been given it. (Or similar cases of bad/unclear boundaries.) There’s a certain amount of cultural indoctrination on this point, though that indoctrination is widely variable in its efficacy – some people have a really bad case, some people never really had it stick at all, most are probably in the middle somewhere.

Since I believe jealousy is rooted in the belief that some legitimate property is being stolen and given to someone else, and there’s a cultural expectation that something that is automatically signed over to a partner is emotional/sexual exclusivity (and thus legitimately the property of the partner for at least the duration of the partnership), there’s an automatic conflict between cultural expectations and practice when a relationship structure is assembled that doesn’t include emotional/sexual exclusivity. I find that a lot of people react to this specific case of jealousy in condemning the entirety.

These days, I’m mostly jealous of my boyfriend’s PhD thesis. It gets all the couple-time.

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Wow. Lots of judgmental people in this thread.

I have been in love with more than one man at a time and felt cheated that I had to choose one over the other because of jealousy and their inability to accept that I could love them equally. I would love to be in a committed relationship with two men.

I am a hypocrite in the fact that a FFM relationship would not work for me. I am too selfish and too jealous and part of the attraction to a FMM relationship is that I want to be the Queen Bee. :wink:

I do have a couple of questions for those who have open marriages. I am truly curious and hope these questions don’t sound derrogative.

  1. Do you worry about the possibility of your partner falling madly in love with someone else and having them exclude you from the relationship?

  2. If your spouse had a baby with one of their partners, would you feel left out?

  3. If your spouse wanted to stop the open marriage but you were in love with a third person, would you end the relationship with this other person?

118

**
Cites, please?

What? You’re saying that two people committing themselves to each other is the oddity? They “cannot be found throughout human history”?
That monogamous marriage is something new?
Again, cite, please?

119

Then you can, you just don’t want to?

Always? Do you select partners based on the needs and opinions of both husband and wife, or is the other person obligated to approve of any new lover, as any less would be considered curtailed freedom?

Sounds snarky, but I’m genuinely curious; what about your life
for a boyfriend? What about the boyfriend of 3 years? I guess I just don’t understand how you define a primary partner.
[/quote]

But they’re not friendships, are they? They go far beyond that. How do you control how far?

120

Lilairen, First off, please pardon me, I have been remiss:

Welcome to the SDMB!

My reference to serial monogamy and polygyny was not related to women dating multiple men serially. Two references that may provide a better description of my opinion include:

With regards to your arguments about the two root causes of jealousy, I think we only have a semantic difference. My comments were strictly related to what you describe as the first root cause. And I believe that was the use implied in earlier comments in this thread regarding jealousy.

Your second root cause, which you admit was hard to verbalize, doesn’t sound like jealousy to me, at all, at least in my use of the term.

You summarize the cause as:

I fully understand that feeling, but wouldn’t describe it as jealousy.

Let’s take the example out of a relationship, and see if it helps clarify my point. Assume that you and a coworker are both working on a big project. At the beginning of the big project, your boss informs you that success on the project will be viewed favorably in terms of career progression. Toward the end of the project, your boss pulls you aside and tells you the she feels your contribution to the pending success of the project is greater than your coworkers, and that a new department head position (a potential promotion) will be created in the near future. Your project concludes successfully, and a month later, the new position is created, and your coworker is promoted to the position.

Would you describe your emotion as jealousy? I would think it would be more like anger, directed at your boss, and not jealousy, directed at your co-worker. Even if you felt the promotion was undeserved, you may actually be happy for the co-worker. But you may be resentful to your boss for their lack of integrity and equitable treatment.

I think the same dynamic plays into your example, just that it is more clear when described outside the relationship.

So, while I understand and accept your “second root cause”, I just wouldn’t describe it as jealousy.

Further, it is your response to the emotion which would be of interest. Even if I accept that your example is one of jealousy, was it constructive?

I can imagine three different responses you may have had:
[ul]
[li]Pull away from your relationship with your primary, as a way of expressing your anger, and to punish him for the lack of attention you felt you deserved. This response could hardly be described as constructive.[/li][li]Become suddenly more attentive and responsive to your primary’s needs, attempting to divert the lacking attentions back in your direction. While this may sound constructive, I think the motivations are for entirely the wrong reasons.[/li][li]Do as you did, and discuss your feelings with your primary. At this point, his response could also be one of the above (neither of which would be constructive). Or, it could be resolved as it was in your example. Wherein your needs were met, without addressing his actions with the Other Person in question, which tends to prove it isn’t jealousy - it wasn’t about his actions with the Other Person at all. It wasn’t about him “denying me this thing that he knew I needed and giving it to That Other Person”, it was about him denying you what you needed, period. While this was constructive, I can only conclude that jealousy was not the issue. Loyalty, commitment, and consideration certainly were.[/li][/ul]

I must assume your last sentence as intended to be tongue-in-cheek, as I hope you are not suggesting that you can be jealous of a thesis. Although you may be envious of the attention it receives.