I’m not talking about people being unfaithful as a way to say “I’m finished”, but people who never previously gave any hint of being polyamorous wanting to do this? I never really heard of it until a year or two ago, and now I’m hearing about it all the time.
What gives? Is it something new, or something that only seems to be new?
Possibly they are trying to see if the other really cares enough to work on the relationship. Hoping to make them jealous?
New to you, but not a new thing. I’ve heard stories about married partners suggesting that they want an “open marriage” for my entire adult life.
It seems, to me, like a situation where one partner decides that they aren’t satisfied anymore with the affection or sex that they’re getting in their marriage (probably the result of their spouse being busy and tired by the demands of work and family life), are sexually bored, and/or decide that they aren’t as interested in monogamy as they thought they would be.
Definitely not a new thing. And it can also be an attempt by one party to keep the other in a relationship, when they think the other party is about to leave so they can see other people, and are willing to give up monogamy as a last ditch attempt to keep their partner. As in the Streets, Dry Your Eyes Mate (released 2003): “The wicked thing about us is we always have trust. We can even have an open relationship if you must”
I actually first heard of open marriages when I was a grade-schooler in the early 1970s, when some people AT MY CHURCH (Methodist, no less) very openly got involved in it, to a point where I figured out what was going on, as much as a youngster that age in that era reasonably could. (No, my parents didn’t participate, and I have a feeling that this was one of a multitude of reasons why we stopped going there in 1975.)
Why, yes, the divorce rate for the participants was 100%, what makes you ask? Anyway, it’s the one-sidedness of these stories that had me wondering if a person proposing this to salvage a failing marriage was a new thing, for at least as many stories as I’ve heard and read lately.
Poly person here.
One read on it — giving it a generous interpretation — is “I think I still want to be with you, but I’m a whole lot less sure I want to be only with you. And if my only choices are to split up or be exclusive with you, I’m not sure I’m in”.
It’s definitely selfish; it may not be an entirely unhealthy form of selfishness. Cynical people would perhaps say if this was his attitude he should have said so from the start instead of reserving it for when he was partway out the door. I can’t point fingers in either direction, never having married and being overt about being poly since 1980 or so… I can see the point about reaching for poly when a mono relationship is on its last legs, it’s hard to see that in any kind of warm fuzzy light.
It is true that one advantage of poly — if you’re for real about it and not just using it as code for “I’ll stay with you until I link up with someone else to be exclusive with” — is that you don’t have to leave a partner. You still can, if it’s toxic and unrewarding and so on, but if it merely fails to be a Relationship Such That You’d Forego All Other Possible Relationships, and it still gives you both pleasure, you don’t have to toss it overboard the way mono people do.
From what I’ve seen, people who truly want to be poly rather than wanting to have their cake and eat it too come to it fairly early in in a relationship. And I may be (read: definitely am) cynical, but the (usually) men who suggest opening their marriages often a) have a specific candidate in mind and b) freak right out if their wife agrees and actually finds another man to try it out with.
Honest open relationships are a lot of work, and my hat’s off to those who manage them well. It takes fantastic communication skills and a real empathy for others to conduct one without anyone getting hurt.
I’m only going to speak to the “Now I see it all the time” part.
One or more of your social media algorithms seems to think you’re interested in this stuff so now the algorithms are flooding you with it.
Yeah I think so too. Or even before they’re in a relationship.
Before is ideal!
I get that some people start feeling like they’ve missed out on something by deciding to commit to an exclusive relationship. But none of the ones I’ve met had really thought through the intricacies of ethical poly relationships. (Three, all middle-aged men married over 10 years, all now divorced.)
Definitely not a new idea. IMO it’s mostly this:
Although I’d quibble a bit with @kenobi_65’s assertion that the disconnect is likely fully justified by some external circumstance vs. some internal preference.
Traditional monogamy includes sexual exclusiveness. Which says if there is a disconnect in that department, at least one somebody is being made miserable, and perhaps both. If the marriage is otherwise “good enough” one partner may hope to solve the sex problem outside. Or the other may be “tolerant enough” to invite or let them do it. Again not because either wants an open marriage for its own sake, but rather because one or both are more afraid of, or undesiring of, the divorce process or becoming single again.
The odds on non-inherently poly people making the sex-outside program work are not good. But it can happen, and if someone is thinking “I’ll try anything to avoid divorce over our sex problems”, well, this is one of the obvious “anythings”.
When one person wants sex monthly, maybe, and the other says “daily is almost enough”, something is gonna give. Because that chasm is usually too wide to bridge. Regardless of how they got there.
I have definitely heard of polyfidelity, where people are faithful to more than one person (wrap your head around that!) and groups of poly people calling themselves a “polycule.”
Yeah we use both terms. allthegood and I aren’t doing the polyfidelity thing (nobody’s off limits to either of us, passing fancy or new partner) but we’ve definitely had polycules of me, her, her other boyfriend, other boyfriend’s other girlfriend, my other girlfriend, other girlfriend’s other boyfriend and his two other girlfriends. allthegood’s other boyfriend got it on with one of my other girlfriends later on.
Wow. I don’t even have that many friends.
Sort of the opposite thing: One of my best friends is currently going through a divorce because her wife has always wanted to open up the relationship and has used her lack of sleeping around as something she expects relationship points for, but for whatever reason she didn’t want it enough to leave the marriage. Instead she invented a totally different reason for the divorce, blowing a minor event way out of proportion and holding a grudge for over a year before finally having the courage to cut the cord.
That’s my read on it anyhow.
I wonder if what’s new is possibly the idea that it would be open for both parties . People have chosen not not to end relationships over affairs for probably as long as there have been relationships - but I wouldn’t consider a relationship where only one person is free to have additional partners “open”.
Maybe.
Without trying to get into sexual politics, I expect the “Somebody wants lots, somebody wants little to none” is a more common failing than "Both agreeing ‘I want more … just not with you.’ ".
IOW, horny person wants more than non-horny person wants. They offer the other “open” in exchange for themselves going open, strongly expecting that’s not an actual give on their part since the other won’t want (or use) the open for themselves.
OTOH …
The clandestine adulterer just does it, and expects a) the spouse won’t find out and b) if they do they’ll just put up with it, whether by practical necessity or a balance of benefits argument.
Once found out, the clandestine adulterer can choose to keep doing it or quit. Whether with their current illicit partner or another. And the other spouse s faced with the same dilemma again. And again. And …
The alternative is simply lay it all out up front: “I’m gonna, and you can’t stop me. But you can play along at home if you want.” That’s what “open” amounts to in this case.
We do live in a world that’s less unequal than it was. Not as many women are economically trapped with hubby no matter how egregious his faults than as was once the case. Whether that guilts guys into offering open before or while helping themselves outside is an interesting question I sure can’t answer.