I may have a strange definition of marriage that might come from my complete lack of religion. Churches are, after all, mostly in the business of being not okay with the subject of genitalia, which is mostly what has shaped the “institution of marriage.”
I would like to have a long-term friend, a non-blood relative I have known for a long time, whose character I can vouch for, someone approximately my age, to hold my power of attorney, as my insurance beneficiary, and stuff like that, and I to them. I need not ever pork this person. I need not live in the same house as this person.
I do not consider myself polyamorous, I’m not particularly interested in swinger wife swap whatever. I tend to prefer having lots of sex with one person. But, in the modern world, partners do come and go. Job opportunities arise (or more frequently jobs evaporate and they have to go back somewhere they can more easily afford) and it’s completely insane to ask someone to follow you. Or you just get tired of each other. Legally attaching onesself to your favorite person to fuck does not seem like a viable financial strategy. Look how many people it destroys every year.
Perish the thought of having children.
So, the thing that other people have, where they’ve picked one human to be a roommate/permanent sexual partner/insurance beneficiary/person whose allowed to shit while you’re taking a shower/eventual divorcee? I don’t understand wanting this for yourself.
It’s kind of weird because I agree a healthy marriage requires a healthy sex life with your partner, but at the same time I don’t think a marriage should be built upon the premise of sexual gratification nor be dependent solely on it.
As for Polyamory, though, I don’t see it as good or bad in general. Might be better to cohabitate with larger groups as humanity moves forward, but it certainly complicates relationships.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I just don’t think polyamory can work. It will never stay or remain balanced between them all, and simply doesn’t work long term. Two people is already incredibly difficult on so many emotional and logistic levels, adding a third while also remaining the love and attraction equal is simply not sustainable.
I am the type of person who cannot separate sexual relationships from romantic relationships. I used to think the same way you about open/poly relationshios and also “friends with benefits”. Every time I’d seen one they ended badly with someone, like me, “catching feelings” and someone getting hurt.
However, I recently found out that a couple in my friend group has an open marriage. They attend parties together and very much appear to be a loving couple like any other and, I believe, they are. They just also date and have sex with other people sometimes.
I think it isn’t for everyone. I also think that often someone is dissatisfied in a relationship and they think they can make it work with a third or open relationship… and it doesn’t work out. But I’m convinced that for some people it absolutely works.
My wife and I both work full time. She is in a masters program nights and weekends. We have two elementary school aged kids. We barely get to interact. Another year to go. Fuck I’m tired.
I think I understand why people hate on them. First, cheaters in monogamous relationships. What people don’t realize is that there are cheaters in Poly relationships to. It’s actually a ton of extra work making sure everyone and their wishes are respected.
Second, religious fundamentalists. People think of Mormons mostly when thinking of Poly people. Misogyny, religous indoctrination, all the worst shit you can think of. Not all Poly people are religious you know.
Polyamorus people deserve marriage equality. They deserve to love the way they want.
Ive seen about 5 open marriage relationships first hand as part of my social circle, and maybe another 10 open dating relationships in the same expanded social circle. All hetero relationships, and I’d say slightly more than half of them were initiate by the woman. All “progressive” / non-religious poly.
This has been about a 15 year period, and every single one of those relationships at this point is over, or on deaths door.
My closest friend at one point was one of those, and I watched him slowly get more and more depressed over 6-8 months before opening up to me about it. He was critical of me passing judgement on poly relationships until I told him “OTHER people are capable of poly relationships. YOU are not.” And that’s really my only criticism to poly stuff. It is possible to be two well adjusted people participating in a long term mutually consensual polyamorus relationship. But those are about as common as rolling a natural 20 in the sample set of poly relationships. The rest are just headed for the garbage and at least one person in the relationship already knows it.
Real Polyamorus deserve marriage equality and to love the way they want. Most of the others are just virtue signaling and wearing it like a fashion statement, which is why they get made fun of.
I think a lot of people have the experience of dating someone who does not reveal they are poly until it is too “late.” I have a friend who is constantly meeting people and then learning that they already have a boyfriend, which is extremely frustrating.
My ex husband also decided that he wanted to be poly. I was okay with it (I had no interest in pursuing other relationships myself) - but then he decided to throw our marriage away so he could chase legal teens half our age…
The worst part is that you are supposed to feel “compersion” or something. It wasn’t enough to let my husband fuck teenagers, I had to be happy about it. It made me feel absolutely horrible and devastated my self esteem.
The poly lifestyle also sort of encourages you to view relationships as means to an end and disposable. You see this person for your sex needs, this person for your emotional needs and so on. It’s not a lifetime partnership.
They weren’t implying a lack of sexual desire altogether. They were implying someone who was no longer attracted to their spouse but wanted to have sex with other people instead would just call themselves poly instead of getting a divorce…
Like how all those cishet guys go through years of emotional and hormone therapy, multiple surgeries, etc, so they can perv out in the women’s restroom by calling themselves trans. Obviously /s
Strangely, the only poly people I seem to come across are bi-guy in relationship with woman and female-to-male trans-man. I know other polycule types exist, but for that type, to paraphrases Rick Sanchez: “That just sounds like polygamy with extra (accepting) steps.”
I have nothing against practical monogamy save for this. You must free the ones you love before they can freely choose you.
It’s why insisting on lifetime guarantees of sole-possession is the worst possible way to soothe your jealousy or fear of abandonment.
If you can’t let go of that fear long enough to put someone else’s happiness first, it doesn’t matter how many oaths, contracts or incentives you use to fortify your conquest. You will never know what real trust feels like.
(Pre-edit: this became much longer than intended. You struck a chord in me it seems.)
You’ve articulated this so very well. It’s a lesson that took me many years to learn and comes with the prerequisite of respecting yourself and respecting your partner to such a degree that the relationship comes second for both of you. Each person’s first priority should be themselves. Both parties need to respect that to the point of accepting that staying together is not a given and is contingent on both parties being fully satisfied with the direction your lives together is heading.
The funny thing is that I’ve never felt more confident in my relationship since learning that. I used to think that’s putting the relationship second to yourself is antithetical to commitment but actually it’s the other way around. The only way to fully commit to a relationship is to make sure that maintaining it is a concious choice rather than an expectation or given.
The way my dad illustrated this lesson in my youth (and I took the advice but only recently learned the full meaning of it) is like this: life is a journey down a road with many crossroads. Should you find a partner, you walk together. If you hit a crossroad and can’t agree on a direction then thank each other for the lovely journey together but let them follow their own path. Find that partner that is going to the same destination and you’ll have found happiness in love.
I like that analogy. Is the blessing of a traveling companion measured by miles shared? Of course not. They had and will have their own adventures apart from yours. Pretending otherwise is just immature, but demanding otherwise is selfish.
Yet many do. “Me or no one” exclusivity under “till death” contracts are considered normal. The coercive nature of these relationship parameters are rarely considered, and neither is their cost, many of which relate to consent.
This is where I usually get pushback so I’ll explain. For simplicity, consider the typical (sexual) consent scenario, where Alice gives Bob consent but withdraws it later. Can Bob retain her consent by getting her to sign a written contract? No. But what if the contract just prevented her from leaving? Again, no. But what if the contract specified an incentive she forfeits by leaving? Legal, but no. But what if the contract made him her only option without forfeiture? Again, legal, but no.
Perhaps, having signed such a contract, Alice might acquiesce, and may even be enthusiastic at times. But sadly, Bob just put a lot of effort into making it difficult for him to ever know for sure, because “to have and to hold” Alice was more important to him than her freedom and happiness.
This is why I insist on relationships that are explicitly open from the start. It’s not important to me to have multiple partners, but it is absolutely essential to me to be chosen freely. Not in exchange for anything. Not to fulfill a promise, duty, or obligation. Simply their current preference and desire. The result is I can be certain in each moment that my partners want me for me. Not my status or money or security I provide. Just me. And my life is so much better for it, because that kind of trust is precious and, apparently, quite rare.
My opinion is fuck people like this that want you to conform to their standards of what a relationship is.
If you can have a happy and healthy relationship with someone without having sex with them? That awesome and you don’t have to give a single shit what losers like the OOP think about you.
Wonder if the poster took the moment to consider the millions of folks out there who physically can’t have sex anymore due to circumstances outside their control when they wrote this 🤔
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