That’s fine if she didn’t ALREADY know that he wanted to be more than friends. If she really IS polygamous, it’s wrong, and yes LYING of her not to let people know what the chances are, who are hoping to become more than friends with her and potentially become her significant other.
To discount a monogamous person’s feelings and desires by not letting someone know of your preferences, and just allow them to believe everything is “going along fine” is JUST as wrong as someone lying to a polygamous person, when really, all along they wanted him/her to themselves.
PS Lizard are you sure Brian is really her boyfriend? Maybe he’s just got that creepy, semi-stalker wannabe thing going on, and the lady who introduced him was hoodwinked by HIM into thinking that he’s really your date’s boyfriend?
Hence the, “she really doesn’t like anyone to know” thing. THAT sounds kinda weird to me, she may not be the one lying here. NOT that I’m defending her, but I’d find out for sure if it isn’t just wishful thinking on Brian’s part first.
Otherwise, as you said, there are plenty of single girls out there.
What? The polymorous person wants to wait until the monogamous person has feelings for them? That’s just cruel, and tricker no less. This is dishonest, and selfish, no two ways about it. They want to try and get the person to have feelings for them so that they might be able to talk them into at least a roll in the hay. Not only dishonest but outright manipulatio. Enough people are looking for “the one” that polymorous people can NOT be unaware that for them to “justify” it this way is just plain mean and dishonest.
A risk of WHAT? That the person the poligamist is dating will say “no thanks”??? That’s as it SHOULD be. To not allow them the right to turn down something in which they don’t partake by not saying it is wrong. It’s just so unbelievably wrong to set them up and wait until you (collective you) are “ready” to tell them, hence giving false hopes, allowing them to start developing feelings for you, etc.
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I’m just stunned at your reasoning. A lie is a lie. Whether it’s by ommission, or outright, you’re taking away the OTHER person’s right to have the information they need with which to make a decision. A person who is monogamous SHOULD be allowed the option to be “scared away” the sooner the better. After all, a fellow polygamist will be willing or not willing purely on the basis of their attraction to the initiator, no?
Brian didn’t sound as if he “accepted” it to me. Just the way the OP put it, he didn’t like being “hidden” anymore than the OP liked her “hiding” what her plans were for him. And THIS, not her poly, or not poly lifestyle is the point really.
Yes, she pretty much led you on, poly or not.
Yes, you’ve every right to be annoyed.
But no, holding on to that annoyance does you zero good.
Feeling all that anger in the pit of your stomach can’t be a good sensation, can it?
She’s not worth it, probably never was.
Let it go, find a woman who you want to hang out with as just-a-friend if that’s what you want, or a woman (or a few) who you’re sexually interested in and who might return it.
But damn… I know from experience… holding on to shit like this won’t help. At all.
Kiss it goodbye, and walk on.
Because, honestly, does she deserve to be affecting your emotions tonight? Does your relationship with her mean enough to give yourself another instant of agony/anger/frustration over this?
I completely agree. I do not do this. But as I said before I understand it as the difference between the ends justifying the means and the means justifying the ends.
Would you want to start with a huge arbitrary societal roadblock in your way? I know I don’t want to, but I do since I’d personally find it unethical otherwise. However again, I can see why people would do this.
Yes, a fellow polygamist would be willing based soley on attraction. Thats obviously not the case with a monogamous partner. Which is exactly the point.
I believe if this is the case* that the intent is overall good, if unethical to me personally. Hypothetically she may well be interested but too chicken shit to say anything lest she fuck it up.
*After reading wendell’s post about this happening for 4 months then yea, i’m inclined to believe she is TLB.
I agree. However my point was, however badly made, that he indeed did judge her without knowning anything about her intent.
That said, yea, shes probably a lying manipulative bitch.
I also thought that that might be a possibility. That you and Brian are in exactly the same state from TLB’s point of view - the difference being that Brian has deluded himself into think that he’s TLB’s SO - while you have not.
Still, Lizard, after that last thread - what the fuck?
No, which is why I’m upfront about what I want. You don’t have to scare the person to death with “I want a huge wedding, a white picket fence and 2.5 kids” to let them know of your intentions. And if your lifestyle is somewhat off the beaten path, the person has an obligation to be upfront, first date if not sooner.
I’m not just lambasting polymorists, but others who do the “lie by ommision” thing, for instance players, the ones who pretend they’re looking for love also, then get all annoyed that you won’t “give it up” by the first or second date. Or worse, the ones who pretend to be looking for that special someone, just to get laid.
See, that’s on HER though. The “fucking it all up” part. If the other person decides to opt out, for whatever reason, they have that RIGHT, and keeping things as important as a polymorist lifestyle from them in the hopes of getting them so in love with you or whatever, that you can gloss that over further down the line, is wrong.
I don’t know, Brian’s comment of "yeah she doesn’t like people to know, and sometimes that bothers me (if he’s not creepy semi-stalker dude as I’m guessing could be the case), did it for me. If Brian truly IS her boyfriend, and she’s hidden him from EVERYONE, nevermind the OP, that right there makes me think “sneaky and underhanded” if not outright TLB.
But, that’s just me.
He judged her based not on whether she was polymagmist, but on the fact that she knew he was interested, and yet she hid the supposed boyfriend from her. And again, as I said in an earlier post. Polygamists are NOT unaware that more people are seeking “one and onlies” than are seeking just sexual partners to add to their “clump”(??). So if a person has a lifestyle they KNOW is not likely to be shared by most people they’re dating, they have an extra obligation to allow the person they’re dating that information so that they can make informed decisions.
Also, the OP gave us a link to his previous dating history with her, and that combined with the OP, well I find it hard to believe that you would come to the conclusion that he was judging her possible polygamy. Particularly, again, given Brian’s obvious dismay.
I mostly agree. But I can see a grey area where the benifets outweigh the consequences. Where Enough of a relationship has been built to be able to stand something odd but far far far before anything like love can be invoked. A period in time where one can actually get to know someone before being deterred by an arbitrary society roadblock. Yea, it’s a slippery slope. But I think it’s a valid viewpoint. The ends justify the means.
I do not find that I am even remotely capable of judging this, nor do I think I should. Thus I hold myself strictly to telling people about my philosophies.
That said I’d say 2 months tops depending on how frequently they saw each other. 4 months is definitely treading on lying bitch territory.
Meh. I saw that more along the lines of “yea, it bothers me sometimes, but I understand it and accept it as a conditional.” TMI. This is how me and my ex-girlfriend were, except I told her from day 1.
Polyamorists aren’t just looking for sexual partners. At least not I. I want a monogamous partner. I simply want to actually love her before i commit. Sadly, as history has shown, I don’t know how the hell to identify it.
I didn’t read the previous thread. I opened it read the OP and recognized it as something I read along time ago. I then closed it.
The polygamy issue was an example/possibility. I was bitching because he didn’t know what her intent was. He just assumed she was playing a game with him. I suppose you can look at it that way, but I easily see differing viewpoints. He needed to talk to her first before he judged anything at all.
Nope. Not valid. One hundred percent invalid. Most people are not comfortable with a polyamorous lifestyle. In fact, most people are not really capable of a polyamorous lifestyle. Trying to get someone to fall for you before you drop that particular bomb is utterly unacceptable. It’s fine to save up divulging your sexual fetishes and love of cheesy horror movies until someone’s fallen for you (so long as you accept that your partner doesn’t have to participate in them with you). It’s not fine to save something big like this up until “later” because when you date someone, it’s with the intention of building a relationship, and relationships can’t be founded on lies, or even lies of omission. And someone who is a monogamist (like the vast majority of the population) is looking for something completely at odds with the polyamorous lifestyle.
Trying to hoodwink someone into going along with it because you’re attracted to them is a terrible thing to do, morally, and it virtually guarantees the end of the relationship. Even if the victim isn’t terribly pissed off by your deception, and even if they try out the lifestyle, they’re not doing it for themself, they’re doing it for you. And you can’t do something like that without personal commitment to it. If you’re honest and upfront, you’ll find a few folks interested in trying. And if you don’t find anyone else, you’ll have to make peace with being a restless poly in a monogamous relationship, just like everyone has to make peace with things not going their way sometimes.
However, you’re capable of judging the OP in loud, indignant, ringing invective. How ironic.
If this is the way you approach relationships, I can’t say I’m surprised.
He assumed that because that was what all the evidence pointed towards. It could be that TLB is polyamorous, but there’s zero evidence for it; it’s just as reasonable - i.e. it also has zero evidence to support it - to suggest that she’s secretly being held hostage by Brian, who controls her actions through a chip in her brain, and desperately trying to reach out enough to escape. But it’s not fucking likely.
I don’t know you, or what your fucking problem is that you brought your own personal experience in, assumed with zero evidence that it was the cause of TLB’s issues, and condemned the OP. Perhaps you realized it was in reference to you, and you’re TLB trying desperately to defend herself. Whatever the cause, though, there’s something seriously wrong with how you approach people, and the fact that you don’t see it makes it even scarier.
I have to second this - you posted in the previous thread that you thought she was just leading you on and that she wanted the best of both worlds… so four months later, why is it a surprise all over again?
Christ. Why am I even defending myself. I’ve said a dozen times. I do not think what I proposed is ethical. I made it a point to say it a dozen times because I knew people would think I would think that way. Please read what I wrote.
I see it as valid if immoral to me personally. I can understand why people would do it.
Yep. it’s amusing how passion trumps rationale isn’t it?
I have to agree generally with the OP. You can be ‘friends’ with members of the opposite sex, but if you happen to have an SO and you are spending copious amounts of time with another friend of the opposite sex, I think you’re being unfair to your SO as well as the other friend, and it doesn’t make any difference if you are male or female. Obviously there are a lot of exceptions here, an obvious example of which is business relationships. But my impression from the OP is that his female friend is really skirting the line between what’s appropriate and what’s not. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I think having drinks and visiting museums together sounds just a tad ‘datish’. A lot here might depend on who paid for the drinks and so on. But if the circumstances and actions surrounding the occasion were appropriate to a date, then it was a date, and really not right in the context of her already existing relationship.
Incubus, you are correct in saying that he probably wouldn’t have treated her the same, if he’d known she was already with somebody. That’s just the way things are. But to withhold the fact that she has a boyfriend in an effort to perpetuate a ‘friendship’ based on the guy’s desire to take things to a higher level is just wrong.
Alas, I see this is true, though only in retrospect. The full story is that I had tried really hard in the interceding months to accept that she wasn’t interested, without her ever actually saying it outright. I thought I had done it. Maybe I secretly still carried a torch for her. I know her behavior confused me. If she really wasn’t interested in more than friendship, than her idea of appropriate “friends” activity with other single men is far, far broader than any I’ve seen before. I mean, we talked on the phone for hours, I called her up one night and asked her to a movie the very next night and she accepted (and we went to dinner afterward), etc.
I guess, doing my best to be objective, she never actually said anything to explicitly lead me on, but her actions simply didn’t conform to any definition of casual friendship between supposedly single men and women I am aware of. I was annoyed at her casual dismissal of my inquiry of whether we’d just gone a date or not one time. (She said “you think too much”). IMHO, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to know exactly where you stand.
She may not have had a boyfriend at that point—I don’t know. If she didn’t then, that would be one fact in her defense. However, two things really condemn her in my mind: 1. — Her boyfriend (and I don’t believe he is deluded as some have suggested. The woman who introduced us is in a position to know TLB well) saying himself she didn’t tell anyone about their relationship and it bothered him. This statement coincided with my own judgement she was hiding something. I had merely assumed what she was hiding was not something relevant to our relationship. But clearly it was, and she knew it. What her boyfriend said proves she hides it from others as well. This is not how people with harmless motives behave.
2. — Her failing to tell me straight out what she really thought. This is just repeating what I already said, but it bears repeating. This woman is 34 years old, old enough to understand the principle behind “Honesty is the best policy.” Whether she had a boyfriend, was polyamorous, or was just not attracted to me at all, are all factors she could’ve use to give an answer to the yes/no question of “Do you like me the way I like you?” Her exact thinking was less important than giving me a real answer, which is something she never did. And I gave her plenty of chances to say it.
can we all stop flogging Harmonix and the polygamy issue? It both a red herring and a dead horse by now.
Thank you! I was going to say that. It may be that she doesn’t know anything about “The Boyfriend”. Why don’t you set your vicious anger aside and ask her?
Lizard, as others have asked, who paid on the your dates with TLB?
Somehow it seems to me that if you went Dutch, put in both about the same amount of effort (not one pursuing the other) and you enjoyed the time spent with her, and maybe even enjoyed the erotic/romantic tension with her, and she didn’t demand that you wouldn’t see other girls, then in what way does she “owe” you?
You could just as easily consider your semi-romantic time with her as a gift you both gave each other. It’s not that easy to find someone who’s fun to be with, makes an effort to spend time together, and who gives you that special feeling. Would you have enjoyed yourself more, spending the time you spent with TLB, on a series of more or less unsatisfactory dates?
And, for the record, I always paid for everything. She always acted grateful, but she never refused to let me pay, and she makes about four times as much money as I do (a fact she is well aware of). I thought I was being a gentleman. Now I see was just her chump.
Maastricht, all I can say in response is that we DIDN’T go Dutch, and we are both Americans, not Europeans. You’ve laid out a European point of view on this issue that makes sense, but even if I were capable of being so rational about it, her misleading me is ultimately a deal breaker. And there is no doubt she misled me, deliberately. Her boyfriend’s statement is the proof. As others have noted, no worthy relationship can be based on lies.