Polyamory/open marriage questions [Formerly, "What Exit's polyamory question..."]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I’m always fascinated by these threads. I’ve come to realize that the poly people I’ve known in arenas other than the Dope are the exception rather than the rule.

All the people I personally know in polyamorous relationships are being what I’d consider dishonest about it. The situation is either such that a) one partner is agreeing to be poly, but not meaning it or b) they behave with a reckless disregard for the sanctity of other people’s relationships.

My example couple I’ll call B and R - B agreed to a poly relationship because his wife made it crystal clear that it was either that or loose her forever. She was going to “follow her heart wherever it led” every single time. He’s had a few partners outside - but every time he does it, it’s pretty clear he’s either doing it as either as a futile attempt to punish his wife or to even the “count” with her, or (rarely) exploring a new relationship he hopes will replace her. Being poly doesn’t make him happy - it makes him miserable. I knew him both before and after his relationship with R, which is his first poly relationship.

His wife will chase anything that catches her fancy - regardless of how B feels about it - or the object of her current fancy’s relationship status. The one and only time she met my husband (who was at that point my fiance - we were about 6 weeks pre-wedding), despite knowing full well that we were not in a poly relationship and knowing that there was no chance in Hell I would be okay with it, she propositioned him. He was uncomfortable as hell, I was exasperated, her husband was livid and my best friend (who was my maid of honor and meeting my husband for the first time) was embarassed as hell.

So, it’s good to know there are poly people out there that don’t share their… particular outlook :wink:

Still not a good lifestyle choice for me - I’m hardwired for traditional monogamy. I like it that way. I’ve got nothing against anyone whose life works better with another system, but I’d be absolutely miserable any way other than traditional monogamy absent a fairly major life-altering event.

42

Aangelica, I notice you never refer to either of the people in the couple as “friend”. Kudos. They sound like quite a pair, especially her. I suspect she’d be an asshole even if she was a nun. :rolleyes:

Thanks for not taking them as our PosterCouple.

43

This sounds like it’s more related to her being an amoral bitch than a polyamorous woman.

I think the best answer to the question of “how can I trust a poly person around my SO” is to say while being poly may be considered immoral by some standards, it is not synonymous with being amoral… everyone will behave according to their personal ethics. A homewrecker is a homewrecker regardless of their relationship status; you can’t judge by someone being poly any more than you can judge by them being single or gay or married. When it comes down to it, what really matters is how much you can trust your spouse to be honest with you and not violate the boundaries you have established for your own relationship. (All generic “you” here, of course.)

44

Like the others who have posted in this thread I would never get involved with somebody who is married or in an otherwise permanent relationship unless I had clear knowledge that their partner knew about the arrangement and didn’t mind it. It’s a matter of courtesy and not being an asshole. It’s also a matter of standards and safety. Someone who would betray the trust of someone close to them in that manner is not someone I want to be intimate with. And if they’re demonstrating themselves to be dishonest about relationships, then how can I trust them? I won’t have sex with someone I don’t trust.

Being in a polyamorous relationship doesn’t mean that I don’t respect conventional marriages or am going to try and convert people to polyamory. My wife and I made a deliberate decision as to the type of relationship we wanted to have. If you and your husband have committed to a traditional monagamous relationship, I respect that, and am not going to take any actions to attempt to break that up.

In response to the question of “Where do you find the time?”. For the most part we don’t. Being with someone else sexually is something that has happened at most a few times a year, and hasn’t happened at all in some years. That’s been more a matter of not having met up with anyone either of us really clicked with who lives nearby, and not having the time or interest to go specifically looking for someone else. What’s more significant for us than any actual relationships is the freedom and relief of not having to worry about jealousy and possessiveness… I don’t have to get upset if my wife gets a massage or spends a long time on the phone with another man, and she doesn’t complain if I go out to a movie or show with a female friend. We can freely discuss things like people we’d hypothetically sleep with without getting jealous or upset. It’s the day-to-day attitude that’s what I find most convienent about the relationship.

45

Thank you for your detailed response. I’m really not sure exactly how much our son wants to know. I am generally in the “gimme the Reader’s Digest version and I’ll ask for the details I want” category, while **Rhiannon **is definitely a “tell me every little detail” person. Our son, being only 8, is still developing his personality, so we’ll just have to play it by ear at the moment.

As **Rhiannon **mentioned, she is not new to having “secondary” relationships, but I am. We are currently involved with another couple, who we had known as friends for some time. It’s just recently that the relationship has changed, and we’re still working out the bugs. This is the first time either member of the other couple has had this type of relationship as well.

We are not trying to “hide” the fact that we have a relationship from the kids (they have 2); though we are of course keeping the details secret. We get together as a “family” from time to time, and we don’t attempt to hide our general affection for each other when we are all together. When Rhiannon went on a date with her “boyfriend” recently, he came over to the house and hung out for a while until I got home from work, then the two of them went out for dinner and a stroll around the town. We thought that our son was going to notice that mom was not home, so he might as well know who she was with. That way, he would know that it was OK with me, and he wouldn’t start thinking something was “wrong”.

The situation we are in now is very much different than where we have been in the past. Then, it was always **Rhiannon **in a relationship, and me not. This was by a combination of choice and circumstance; I was not necessarily looking for another relationship, and nothing presented itself to me. Rhiannon, being quite a bit more outgoing than me, just seemed more naturally to find herself in relationships, and that was fine. Now, with us being in relationships at the same time, with another married couple, the dynamic is completely different. In addition to the “boy\girl” relationships, we also have close friendships with the spouses of our “partners”. We also have a very close relationship on a “family” level, including our children. This makes things sometimes easier, and sometimes quite a bit harder. It is sometimes difficult to avoid “pairing off” the entire time if both families are together, which is something that **Rhiannon **and I don’t necessarily want to do. There is a difference between “partner swapping” and “polyamory” that can sometimes be very subtle and difficult to reconcile. This has caused some tension in our current relationship, to the point at which all four of us seriously questioned whether or not we wanted to continue down this path. In the end, I think we have all decided that we care about each other too much to “give up” over something as silly as “Hey, you’re spending too much time with your own spouse, now it’s my turn!” (which was not really silly at all earlier this week, but it makes me feel better to think of it that way).

Just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have thought for a moment that we would be where we are today. It had been quite a few years since Rhiannon’s last relationship, and she really had no desire for another one. I had never done this, and really had no great desire. Then somehow, we found ourselves in the relationship we are now, and it just all seems perfectly normal (in a really bizarre, twisted sort of way). It’s not that there was something “missing” in our marriage relationship, it’s more like we’re both getting a “bonus”. I can’t really put into words what the “bonus” is, but it enhances our lives both within and outside of our marriage. If this lifestyle was not enhancing our marriage, neither **Rhiannon **nor I would be doing what we are doing. If it were not enhancing our partners’ marriage, we would not be doing it with them.

WhyNot, I’d like to personally thank you for starting this thread; it could not have come at a better time. We’ve been dealing with some “issues” the past few days. The same sort of stuff that happens from time to time with married couples, but with the added complication that instead of one couple, we have six between the four of us. This thread has been great to read, to reinforce the fact that we aren’t completely weird. It has been great to give me a place where I can talk about how I’m feeling to people who will understand me, but who I don’t have any obligation to. It’s been a real help to me the past couple of days.

On preview, this post seems to be all over the place, and I hope it makes some sense to anyone who has gotten this far. It’s really been rather cathartic to me.

46

Yay! I can finally post as me again! I kept wanting to come back and follow up, but it was a pain because of the mix up with my subscription.

I don’t know that this is in response to any actual question previously asked or not, but it was something I’ve been thinking about, so I’ll just post it. Also, I realize that some of my info in my first post (via Suburban Plankton) wasn’t quite accurate. I got my time line mixed up.

I never intended to have this kind of lifestyle. I when I was younger and first dating and looking at marriage, I knew this sort of thing existed, but it was not something I even thought about. It only ever came up, because one day, a guy I worked with let me know he was interested in me. He knew I was married, but felt compelled to tell me how he felt anyway. I liked him as a friend, so I told SP what happened and he told me that he didn’t have a problem with it as long as I kept him abreast of the situation. At that point, I didn’t consider my self poly yet. I just figured I was having an affair “with permission”. It was and on again off again thing. The sexual part was separate from our friendship. When he was actually dating other women, he was faithful to them, and he and I dialed it all back to just friends. When he was single, we moved back into the sexual part.

Then some time later I had a brief, again mostly sexual, thing with another guy. At that time, I again felt like I was having an affair “with permission” because he did not tell his wife. That was wrong of me. At the time, I just felt like, hey, I have permission, and I am not responsible for whether he tells her or not.

In my other post, I said my first polyamorous relationship lasted 3 years. That’s because this was the first relationship where I actually felt “poly” as opposed to having an affair with permission. I loved B. He loved me. I still loved my husband, B still loved his girlfriend. It was polyamory by definition…many loves.

Our relationship developed quite by accident, the emotional bond was far more strong than the sexual. If we had both been single we would likely have wound up together. That relationship ended in 2004 when I had some major life changes and we just couldn’t keep up seeing each other.

I think some people think that all polyamorists are always out there looking for the next relationship or playmate. I actually have never pursued anyone in this area. My relationships seem to come about more serendipitously.

After breaking up with B, SP just lived our very normal monogamous lives. About 6 mos ago we started to become very good friends with a couple tangentially related to us. My best friend’s older brother and his wife. Now, I’ve known my best friend for 22 years, and so by default, her brother. I’m friends with his wife by the default of all of us practically being family. So we discovered that A & N and us have a lot in common and started hanging out a lot. Then about 4 weeks ago, it became very clear that A (bf’s older brother) and I had a deeper, stronger bond than we realized. We had a brief kiss and some handholding at a game night. We decided we couldn’t let it go, nor could we hide it. I had already told him I knew it wouldn’t be a problem for SP, but that I would in no way hurt N as I cared too much for her. Surprisingly, when he told her what had happened, she didn’t mind at all.

Up to this point, I was the only one of the 4 of us who had had any sort of relationship outside marriage. We decided to see if this could work as a group. Not group sex, but the four of us in our varied relationships. SP and N seem to be getting along well, developing a friendship that may or may not lead to anything more than affection and cuddling. They are taking it slowly. A & I are pretty much plunging ahead since we have a lifetime of history between us already. A and SP have become good friends and N and I are become like sisters. We all try to see each other one on one. And we have spent a couple weekend together just hanging out. They have two kids, we have one. The kids are all good friends and love it that they get to hang all weekend together. It’s a strange and wonderful “family” we are building, and we’ve already had some drama, but we’re working through it.

Don’t know if this clears up any other question or curiosities out there. Or if it just brings up more question (feel free to ask!). But I thought it might be beneficial to some to put it all out there.

On preview: I see Suburban Plankton has been crafting a similar post. How very alike we are…LOL!

47

When you are pursuing a lifestyle so foreign to the norm, I don’t know why you would assume that I would know what constitutes being an “asshole” to you. You are willing to sleep with other people’s spouses, but you are not willing to enable cheating to do it; I appreciate that you draw that distinction, but it hardly seems like something you could expect me to know.

I thought about my question before I posted it. How am I in contact with your children? How is it I am speaking to your husband? How is it I have access to your coffee? All these (inapt) hypotheticals assume a relationship between us, however tenuous, with hopefully the mutual respect a human relationship entails. But if you are having an affair with Bob but have never even met Bob’s wife, you don’t have any relationship whatsoever with her. You are not responsible for the state of his relationship with her. HE wants to sleep with you; my question was, why do you care what SHE wants?

Rhiannon set forth the very mindset I was talking about, which seems like a very logical and reasonable one: “Then some time later I had a brief, again mostly sexual, thing with another guy. At that time, I again felt like I was having an affair ‘with permission’ because he did not tell his wife. That was wrong of me. At the time, I just felt like, hey, I have permission, and I am not responsible for whether he tells her or not.” I understand that she came to believe that was wrong of her, but certainly isn’t as clear as you seem to think where that wrongness arises.

But the wife ISN’T involved. She has no involvement whatsoever and may not even be aware that it’s going on. You may not even ever meet her. So it ISN’T crystal clear right off the bat why you would respect boundaries set by HER when they are not congruent with your own personal boundaries, and indeed are apparently not even congruent with her own husband’s personal boundaries, assuming he’s indicated a williingness to sleep with you.

I am not taking issue with your answer in any way, but the tone of it indicated you thought the answer would be perfectly obvious. Believe me, it’s not. There is no inherent morality to “polyamory” that is obvious to an outside observer, that would demand that you either ascertain or respect the wishes of the spouse left at home before entering into a consensual extramarital affair. “Why do you care what she thinks?” is a perfectly reasonable question.

,

I seriously doubt it. But thank you for your answer, and my thanks to everyone else as well.

48

While I cannot speak for WhyNot, I would never sleep with someone who was married or in a committed relationship unless I had first met their partner and had clear indication that they knew of what I was doing and had no issue with it.

49

I understand that, and it makes some sense to me. Assuming you value the “openness” of an open relationship, being a party to deceit would be antithetical to anyone who legitimately held that value. I’m not having trouble grasping the answer; I’m just pointing out it’s not a self-evident answer, such that my question was either stupid or insulting. At least, it wasn’t intended to be. :slight_smile:

50

No, I don’t think it was stupid, either, and I apologize for giving that impression. I think it is, as I said, a very very common fear. And I thank you for the opportunity to address it. It’s just a fear I don’t logically grok, y’know, any more than I grok the common fear of snakes. I guess I’m just naive enough to think that the sort of evil bitch in Aangelica’s tale is the exception, not the rule. No one I’ve run into has been a literal man-stealer like that.

I guess I *was *a little insulted by it just because I thought my reputation as a person who respects other people’s perspectives, points-of-view and ethics was a little more secure around here. I mean, I’m on record as having a great deal of respect for the ethics of a few pro-lifers on this board even within their stance on abortion issues, even though I am decidedly and vocally pro-choice in my ethical stance. I respect and admire some of the Christians and some of the Jews and some of the Atheists, although I’m none of those, and I’m careful to use God or G-d instead of god when appropriate out of respect for their traditions and boundaries. I absolutely understand and respect monogamy when it’s entered into by consenting adults, and I was in fact a little insulted at the suggestion that I was stupid or morally corrupt enough not to. But your clarification helped, as did my re-reading it with a general “you” and not the specific to me “you.” So thank you for that, and any insult is hereby revoked. :slight_smile:

51

Thank you for the revocation. Truly, no insult was intended. A couple of things:

First, the reputation you have around here, at least so far as it includes my opinion, is uniformly high and certainly ethical. But maybe I’m not the most observant bear in the Doper woods, but I was unaware until this thread that you had such an arrangement with your husband. So my trying to figure out how the relationship works definitely should not be viewed as casting aspersions on you. So yes, as you gathered, regarding this subject: general “you”, not “you” specifically.

Second, I think why we get on shaky ground in these discussions is that we are all invested in our own POV regarding moral conduct. For someone who believes in the traditional idea of marriage, you are arguably – and again I say arguably, I’m trying to tread carefully here – over the moral line where a traditionalist would draw it, anytime you have sex outside your marriage or have sex with someone else who is married. So we, as ignorant traditionalists, honestly don’t know where you would choose to draw that line under your moral worldview. You don’t draw it where we draw it, so where do you draw it? So to ask, in all good faith, “would you do this?” and get back a semi-affronted answer, “Good Lord no! That would be immoral!” only highlights to me the fact that I don’t actually know what you consider moral under the arrangement you describe. Sleeping with married men: Okay. Doing it without their wives’ permission: Not okay. It is not blindingly self-evident why the former would be moral but the latter would not.

So please believe me – it is not at all an attempt to ascribe immoral conduct to you or to anyone, but rather an attempt to establish what constitutes moral/immoral conduct in an arrangement like yours, when (a) the concept obviously has meaning but (b) it obviously doesn’t have the meaning I generally give it.

And I do believe that to the extent no harm is done, morality is personal and situational. I’m not arguing my own moral POV or trying to impose my own morality on you or anyone; I’m just trying to get a handle on how you define it, in this context. It was a question; not a judgment. :slight_smile:

52

Just a quick note. Since there were two threads on the subject, and since this thread has seemingly moved beyond the original question, I’ve closed the other thread, and renamed this one so as to make it less confined to one specific question.

53

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

For me, personally, the answer to almost any moral question involving adults is: do we have informed consent? As a wife is an integral part of the relationship with her husband, as he has presumably consented to give her some amount of input into his sexual life (or I need to reassure myself of that, either way) she needs to have informed consent in my moral universe, even if I never so much as share a cup of coffee with her. Certainly if he’s in a “traditional monogamous” marriage or dating relationship, I assume that A. he has consented to give her exclusive access to his genitals (and flirting and romantic attention) and B. she has not consented to contravening that. If he does get her to consent, I need to hear it and convince myself that she’s agreeing freely, informedly (I think I made that word up) and without undue reservation. It’s just the safest route, for me. I hate drama. When you don’t have clear, unreserved consent from the horse’s mouth, you get drama.

The other axiom to that is that nothing entered into under informed consent by adults which causes no harm to others is anyone else’s business. Homosexuality, pluralsexuality, transexuality, transvestitism, bestiality, BDSM - none of it is my business unless it’s happening in my bedroom or to my husband’s genitals. (And his genitals are only my business because he’s given me that informed consent to be concerned with his genitals.)

54

Coming to this late, as I don’t usually read MPSIMS, but my husband pointed me at this thread …

This has been something that I have had to deal with several times, which has caused me a fair amount of distress. Unlike WhyNot, my relationship system isn’t structured as primary-couple with outside relationships; my personal preference is to have two major (marriagelike) relationships.

My first second boyfriend, back when I was in early college, did a whole bunch of “Who would you pick if you had to choose, him or me?” stuff; I recognise now that he is pretty much monogamous by nature, but at the time I was awfully confused, because I couldn’t see any plausible reason that I would have to choose in the first place. He broke up with me soon after I got engaged.

There wasn’t anything quite so dramatic with any of my subsequent partners, but there were similar patterns. My current boyfriend is the first other partner I’ve had who is willing and able to treat our relationship as being as significant and life-entangled as my relationship with my husband or his relationship with his fiancee. It’s, frankly, an amazing relief to not have to worry about my relationship being second-classed by my own partner.

(Edited for slight wording clarity.)

55

Continuing to catch up on the thread …

I like having relationships that make sense to me and are run under rules that I can comprehend.

My husband and I have been together for twelve and a half years; my boyfriend and I for the last year and a half. I have also had three short serious relationships (about a year each) and one that lasted five and a half years.

My extant secondary (not marriagelike) relationship has been going for fivish years? I have honestly no idea. It’s not like we’re the sort of people who pay attention to anniversaries.

So you tell me, do they last very long?

I’m sure some people are. Hell, I heard of someone who dumped all their partners to be monogamous with someone they’d met a few months before. But that was remarkable because it was so freaking bizarre.

For me, emotional. My secondary partner and I are not sexually involved at all.

Whatever safeguards people put in place. There’s no certifying authority.

I would note, though, that my husband supports me, and I’m the one who cares about our relationship structure being poly.

Depends on the people involved. For people who don’t understand monogamy and do understand poly systems, I imagine it’s more so. For people who are only reluctantly poly because their partners insist on it, I imagine it’s less so. There is no one size fits all for relationships.

When I’ve hit a point of “I’m not seeing you enough”, I generally go to the relevant partner and say, “Look, I don’t feel like we’re getting enough time together, could we do a weekly together night/go out to dinner/go play Warcraft together/etc.”. I leave it up to my partners how to work out the necessary scheduling.

56

My husband (whose Dope membership has expired, so he’s not speaking for himself here) suggests this angle of looking at things:

Presumably, when you’re involved with someone, you have to develop some level of trust in that person, and a reasonable level of expectation that that person will keep whatever agreements they have made. It is possible to frame the morality of the situation in terms of whether or not that person is keeping their agreements or can be trusted not to betray you.

It’s exactly the same for polyfolks. Someone who is seriously considering relationships with another person will have to develop sufficient trust in that person to be confident that they won’t get hurt – which means awareness of that person’s generalised responsibility, whether or not they’re liable to break agreements or do something that crosses a line. Getting involved with someone who’s cheating is generally considered to be a bad idea, because that person is demonstrating their untrustworthiness and their willingness to betray a partner.

The only significant difference lies in the contents of the agreements.
(And now I’m caught up and will stop spamming the thread. :wink: )

57

Sorry I think I’ve phrased myself badly. I truly didn’t mean to imply that I was basing my whole judgement of polyamory on those two (who ain’t precisely the poster children for a healthy any-kind-of-relationship). The contrary, actually - one of the reasons I find these kinds of threads fascinating is that there are people for whom polyamory works as a lifestyle. I find it amazingly interesting to hear how it’s structured - and what people find rewarding or have difficulty with. A functional polyamorous relationship (like the ones some Dopers report) is something I have trouble envisioning (mostly because no such animal is possible for me personally so I cannot independently envision how it all works). I find it difficult to even analogize effectively - so I’m glad there are Dopers who are willing to explain things to me. I’m endlessly curious :stuck_out_tongue:

The couple in my example are friends of my best friend - and they’ve been good friends to her, hence I’m sort of socially required to be neutral at worst. I dislike her intensely - he and I always got along well. It’s the old story when a friend marries someone you don’t care for - you can either make an issure of it and probably drive him away, or you can state your feelings about the partner once and then suck it up when you have to deal with them. She’s… damaged, I suppose. Always has been - at this rate always will be. Refuses to admit she’s damaged. She’s heinously selfish, totally self-absorbed and has absolutely no self-esteem - her only positive strokes come from racking up another notch on her bedpost.

Every single polyamorous couple in my personal experience has had at least two major features in common that I, personally, consider unhealthy - I chose that couple because they shared them all.

The polyamorous relationships I’ve seen in the flesh (so to speak) haven’t been even remotely healthy - and if all you see are the broken ones, it’s difficult to imagine how one that isn’t broken should be.

58

I think its easier to see the broken ones, because they tend to be out in the open, spewing their poison all over everyone. The functional ones tend towards discretion.

59

I’m not sure why you’re asking for my opinion here, but since you asked for it, I’ll give it.

No, they don’t last very long.

In my personal view, I believe that limerence lasts that long. Although this article talks about limerence lasting a lifetime, most things I’ve read on it say that limerence lasts between several months and a couple years. And it’s often accompanied by the sexual attraction which gets the mood-altering chemicals active in the brain. It’s my own personal belief that the spiritual aspects of relationships don’t start until these mood-altering chemicals settle down. So having relationships that last for under 2 years are unremarkable to me and are considered to be of short duration by me. It’s also unremarkable to have a relationship based on emotional attachment last longer since it’s not based on the mood-altering substances.

And here when I’m talking about a spiritual relationship, I’m talking about the kind of thing that Joseph Campbell talks about in “The Power of Myth” where he talks about the woman and man coming together as yin and yang to create one unified whole. And the spiritual transformation that comes about in furtherance of that whole. And while I’m not saying that spiritual growth doesn’t happen in the limerence phase, it’s my personal belief that it’s much more evident in the other phases.

So the reason I asked the question was that if someone said that they had a 30 year marriage and a 15 or 20 year polyamory relationship, I’d have different questions, but I haven’t seen that portrayed here yet. I’ve mostly seen what I’d consider several limerence relationships with the backdrop of another partner who is doing the same thing. But that’s just my interpretation from my own experience based on my own beliefs.

And now since I’m back in the thread, I do have a question. I’m wondering if any of you in this lifestyle have encountered others where the wife has the higher libido. Since men can only perform a certain amount during any given day, if the wife is not satisfied, are there relationships where only the wife is allowed to have the extra sexual relationships since any time the man is away, he would be taking away from his wife?

60

Well, I’m only 32 myself, give me some time! :smiley: But I hear what you’re saying, and while it’s something I aspire to, I don’t see it happening in our current set-up. We’d need to meet someone worthy of changing things to more like Lilairen’s arrangement - someone either or both of us could devote just as much energy, and probably time to, as we do each other. I think the relationships you’re thinking of are more likely in plural marriages than open marriages that have a primary couple and secondary partners.

One of my good friends has had two wives in a group marriage for over 20 years. My parents have been with their co-mates (another legally married couple) for…uh…ack, math…17 years now, I think. They’ve all semi-retired and built their dream house together. While my dad, a math major, points out that the ideal number of people in any relationship to avoid conflict is 0.6, he also admits you can build a hell of a better house on four retirees’ savings and income instead of two!

Mmmm…I’m going to have to break this one down, as there are some yeses and some nos, and your assumptions don’t follow.

Absolutely. Most of them, in fact.

Really? Well, intercourse maybe, but they can bring their women pleasure in other ways with an imagination. And there’s a limit to how much friction most women can take in their nethers as well. Maybe this is more of a gender-divide in older folks. I haven’t gotten there yet.

I’ve never run into it myself, but I won’t go on record saying it’s impossible. It’s rather bizarre to me, but whatever “rules” a couple wants, so be it. This to me would be entering the realm of DS - the second someone isn’t “allowed” anything because of the other person’s appetites, my eyebrow goes like this -> :dubious: But if he gets off on her horniness with other men and being restrained to servicing her, then so be it. More often what I see is cases like mine and like Suburban Plankton’s, where one party is simply more interested than the other than seeking other partners, and content to take care of home and hearth and pursue other, non-sexual interests.

But frankly, most men are only limited in their prowess if limited to one woman. A man’s refractory period is amazingly short if you bring a new women into his sight. Remember the tale of Calvin Coolidge, his wife and the chickens?:

My husband’s never had trouble “performing” even after coming directly to my bed from another tryst. Well, not quite directly - usually I ask that he shower first. :smiley: