Maybe. If you don’t want to fuck anyone you should probably get depression treatment before a divorce. If you want to fuck someone new and not your wife then divorce. If you want both, nonmonogamy may be for you, but polyamory involves far less sex than you hope.
It’s not mostly sexual, it’s entirely sexual. As in, sex is the entire point of being in any kind of non-monogamous relationship.
You know what you call a relationship that doesn’t have sex? A platonic friendship. If it really wasn’t about the sex, then they would call them friends.
EDIT: I see I’ve gotten the polysexual people angry with pointing out their bullshit. :D
First: I notice that you’ve made no effort to refute my claim; you’ve changed the subject instead. So I’ll ask directly: if polyamorous relationships aren’t about sex, then why not simply have friendships? If sex was absolutely out of the question in any polyamorous relationship, how would they differ from any other deeply intimate friendship? (ETA - intimate friendships have changed over the centuries; things that we would consider bordering on sexual without being overtly sexual were much more normal among same-sex, nominally heterosexual friends up through the 20th C.)
Second: Yes, arranged marriages (and political marriages fall into that category) are entirely about sex. Or, to be more complete, they’re about producing children that have a specific parentage, which generally requires that the two people have sex. (Adopted children are not usually considered an acceptable substitution for blood in arranged marriages. Similarly, the children of concubines do not have rights of inheritance.) Charles was expected to marry Diana and have children with her–which absolutely meant that he was obligated to have sex with her, even though he and Camilla were very much in love with each other–in order for the royal line to continue.
Do you think monogamous relationships are all about sex? I think you think that love is all about sex, and you’re wrong in thinking that is a general truth. In actuality I honestly find your point of view disturbing.
A power outage killed my response as I was writing, so I’m going to try to remember the salient points. There’s a lot to unpack here.
Do you think monogamous relationships are all [emphasis added] about sex?
All about sex? No. BUT sex–and specifically the lack of sex with other people–is the single defining characteristic of a monogamous relationship. If there is neither sex, nor is there a limitation on having sex with other people, then it’s not a monogamous relationship. Love is hopefully a component of a monogamous relationship, but it’s not necessary to love your partner to be in a monogamous relationship.
I think you think that love is all about sex
I love my parents. I’m not in a polysexual relationship with them. (…Thank fuck, ew.)
I love my friend Jeff like the brother I wish I had. I’m not in a multiamorous relationship with him.
I love my spouse. I am in a monogamous relationship with them.
Being in a monogamous relationship with my spouse does not mean that I can not love other people. Being monogamous with my spouse doesn’t mean that I can’t still love my parents, or Jeff. It doesn’t even mean that I can’t be physically or sexually attracted to other people. It does mean that I can’t have sex with any other people, and it means that engaging in activities with other people that are sexual or are otherwise linked to erotic–romantic–love would put me on very, very thin ice. A private dance that I paid for at a club? Probably okay, but very questionable. Getting (consensually) fingered by a dancer? Definitely not okay. Getting a private dance from someone that I also have a deep personal friendship with? That’s several flyover states away from okay.
So, then, if sex is not a defining characteristic, a necessary prerequisite, of a multiamorous relationship, then how does it differ from the love that I feel for my parents, or for my closest friends? I said, “[…] sex is the entire point of being in any kind of non-monogamous relationship.” I stand by this, because once you remove all of the sexual elements, it is no longer any different from a platonic love. It is the sexual element that makes it a different kind of relationship entirely. The only things that you cannot do with a platonic friend, and have the relationship remain platonic, is anything erotic.
Deeply intimate relationships can be entirely platonic; my friendship with Jeff is frequently very intimate, because we can both discuss deeply person, painful things with the other without fear of judgement or loss of that intimacy. My spouse has been developing very intimate relationships with some of the people that they work with; that does not affect our monogamy. Citing intimacy as a primary driver for polysexual relationships simply isn’t plausible. If intimacy is what they want, then, again, why does the relationship need to be non-monogamous, since monogamy goes not exclude other emotionally intimate relationships? If you can have non-sexual cuddling–which I’m told is a thing, and–as an autistic person–sounds like absolute hell–then what, exactly, do you gain from being multiamorous other than the ability to choose to have sex with more than one person?
Exactly what do you suppose is the difference between multiple deeply intimate platonic friendships and a multiamorous relationship?
Revisiting
I think you think that love is all about sex
and connecting that to the original point of the meme, I do think that if your partner makes a unilateral choice to discontinue all sexual activity, that no person should be expected to be bound to their original agreement to be monogamous. If your spouse is no longer willing to have sex with you (and I don’t mean at any particular time, I mean in general), then they also lose any right to have any say in who you do have sex with.
So yeah it’s pretty clear your polyphobic and do conflate romantic relationships with being sexual.
Ask other people about their views on monogamy and I think you can find some that would call your emotional dependence on friends cheating. Clearly a red flag for most and abusive, but your post is a big red flag for me as well.
I have some questions for you,
Is going on a date with a friend ok? Is kissing someone romantically ok? Is cuddling and holding hands ok? Is emotional dependence ok? Is flirting ok? Is going on a vacation with them ok?
Exactly what do you suppose is the difference between multiple deeply intimate platonic friendships and a multiamorous relationship?
Romanceand sex
I won’t deny that for me personally as a sexual person there is also a sexual element, but one of my partners is ace so for her it’s all romantic.
you can find some that would call your emotional dependence on friends cheating.
…Wut? How am I emotionally dependent on them? It’s an intimate relationship, not a co-dependent one. Taking the view that a close and deep friendship is emotional dependence is a rather grim view, don’t you think?
Is going on a date with a friend ok? Is kissing someone romantically ok? Is cuddling and holding hands ok? Is emotional dependence ok? Is flirting ok? Is going on a vacation with them ok?
I’m going to briefly interject: romance is sex without the denoument. Romance is sexual. A person that says they’re asexual can give and receive a lap dance, and yet a lap dance is still fundamentally sexual.
If you call it a date, and label it as a romantic activity? No. If you’re going out with a friend to do something you are both interested in doing? Yes. Dates are about intent.
Is kissing someone romantically okay? No, because romance is fundamentally about sexuality.
Is cuddling and holding hands okay? It depends on intent. Is it intended romantically by either person? Then no. Otherwise? Yes.
Is emotional dependence okay? No. But that’s not okay in a relationship either. No person should ever have their emotional well-being dependent on another.
Is flirting okay? No, again, that’s fundamentally about sex and sexuality. (Which should be obvious, since people of all genders mistake simply being friendly for flirting, and vice versa, all the time.)
Is going on a vacation with them ok? Of course it is, when it’s something that my partner has zero interest in.
So yeah it’s pretty clear your [sic] polyphobic
…How so, exactly? You’re more than welcome to do as you choose, and I have zero interest in stopping you. Assuming that everyone is enthusiastically consenting, it is neither my circus, nor my monkeys. Edit: My spouse is free to do as they please as well; should they choose to have multiple partners, that is there choice. I will immediately leave, but I won’t stop them.
On the other hand, I think that it’s absolutely delusional to claim that sex is not the defining factor in multiamorous relationships, and to insist that all other people accept that delusion as gospel truth. I was, for a number of years, in multiamorous relationships. I noted that, in all of my partners, and in all of the other multiamorous people I knew, people were always open–at least some degree–to the next new-shiny. Time is zero-sum; you can’t put in time with your new-shiny without also taking time away from somewhere else. That didn’t bother me for a long time, because I was the same. Then it did bother me, because I realized that what I could never find stability in that.;I could never count on being anyone’s first priority all of the time, nor could I ever reasonably promise that to anyone. (Of course, you can’t truly find that in monogamy either. But monogamy as least has that veneer, even if people don’t always live up to the ideal they claim.)
That wasn’t meant as an accusation or anything, nor was I claiming you had or have an unhealthy emotional dependence. There are certainly stages to intimacy, emotionally, romantic, and sexually.
And that really helps tie together what I am trying to explain here. No partnership is inherently anything, people have different needs, desires, and experience the world in vastly different ways. People have varying degrees of emotions, romanticism, and sexuality. Your responses and how you said them did appear phobic or angry/dismissive at the least so that’s why I decided I should just dismiss you as a person disrespecting of my lifestyle.
I think it is clear to me now you either had a bad experience and were traumatized by a poor partner, or simply realized you were monogamous. That is totally ok, I’m glad you realize who you are and are happy with it. Though it is certainly easier desiring a societal norm, see our discussion on what I am, where I am defending and trying to explain the vastness of experiences I and others have. You don’t ever have to defend monogamy in our society. As for your views on relationships and sexuality, I still will deny that partnerships are always ever sexual. It’s definitely possible, reading what you’ve said, you are some measure of aromantic to tie everything to being sexual in origin and meaning within a romantic gesture or close non-platonic intimacy. That’s ok too, that is how you experience the world, but that’s not how everyone is or feels about things. If that view is a response to your experiences, I’m sorry that you’ve only ever experienced things as a pretense to sex, but there is a lot more out there.
There are people like that. You hear about their new partners all the time and see them constantly looking for new partners. That’s not because poly is like that, but because these are the same people who would be serially monogamous if they wanted monogamy.
For me, monogamy just felt too restrictive. My wife and I both broke up with people who wanted monogamy not long before meeting and have always been poly. As a 22 year old I loved the idea of sex, but nearing 30 I love that I can have multiple happy and long term relationships. I love the fact that I could fall in love with someone new without risking losing my wife who I love dearly and cherish. And yeah I’ve been in two happy relationships for about 5 years now. And both my partners like each other and I like my girlfriend’s husband
I’m her girlfriend and her husband is quite happy with the situation. Just as she’s been when he’s had other partners. He actually set us up. The only reason he’s not seeing anyone else at the moment is that nobody else has really gotten his attention. Same reason my wife isn’t seeing anyone else at the moment. If my wife were to be interested in someone I’d encourage it, I love her and want her to pursue what her heart desires.
It’s annoying when monogamous people act like we’re all lying about experiencing compersion.
It’s annoying when monogamous people act like we’re all lying about experiencing compersion.
Man, do I feel this. Why is it so hard to believe that people can feel differently about things?
No, I’m not jealous and afraid my wife is going to leave me if she has sex with someone else. She isn’t when I do that, either.
We’ll eagerly discuss all the juicy details. She loves hearing about my adventures. She’s more shy, so I hear more about who she’d like to be with rather than actual adventures. We both giggle and discuss people we’d totally bang and there really actually isn’t an undercurrent of anxiety about it.
If I found someone that I started to fall in love with, isn’t that an awesome thing? Love is wonderful! And the sort of person that I could love would be someone that my wife would, at the very least, like. How does this not sound like a wonderful situation to people?
Monogamy doesn’t make sense to me, though I respect people’s right to feel the way they do. If they feel jealousy, that’s allowed. If they think it’s better to have jealousy, then I’m confused, but whatever.
It’s just weird that feeling differently gets such negative reactions and accusations of lying.
Growing up in the shroud of monogamy, there is something very freeing and beautiful when I talked to my gf about talking to someone seriously and saying I liked them and wanted to date them. Her encouraging me and celebrating and smiling with me when we both finally had the courage to tell each other our feelings. Helpfully nudged by my boyfriend who clearly noticed we were falling for each other.
I have a lot of love to give, I cherish all of my partners. They are my closest friends and supporters and I welcome the diversity of my desires and needs.
It can be really hard to deal with too, having multiple relationships is something you really really need to work with and takes a lot of attention and care to do it right.
Exactly! Like, I get that some people are very bad at polyamory and are total wrecks about it. Those people weren’t good at monogamy either. It’s easy for casual acquaintances to miss that I’m poly because it’s not causing problems in my life. I have far more romantic problems from my wife’s clinical depression (that she’s had her whole life) and my girlfriend’s abundance of children (also not related to her polyamory) than I do from jealousy or anything like that.
Fuck I’m the boring old married lady even next to some monogamous friends of mine. We don’t do the whole juicy talk thing, but we do get happy at the other’s happiness.
I am extremely happy whenever my partners find someone who can help make them as happy as I try to. I want my partners to have the happiest possible life ever and it’s unfair to everyone involved to stop them from being able to get that happiness.
I think something a lot of monogamous people forget when talking about poly is that jealousy is a pretty natural thing to happen… Even in polyamorous relationships.
I’ve felt jealous before in my situation, the difference is that I talked with my partners and found a good solution and set of boundaries that made everyone happy vs trying to control their time and life.
I said this in another comment but the most loved I’ve ever felt was when my fiancé helped me pick out my outfit for my first date with my bf (who I’m also to a year with!!). I also love helping them both with their relationship struggles and life issues and so on. I love them both tremendously.
That’s totally fair, but also I think a lot of people need to accept that they don’t need to get something to respect it or believe people expressing it. Look at the comments in this thread, there’s polyamorous people explaining our feelings and reasoning next to people asserting that they think it’s just a fetish.
I completely agree, but it’s a big ask of some people for them to respect something they don’t even think is real. If they get some sort of basis for understanding, it’s at least possible then.
for a lot of people in long term polyamory, it’s about intimacy, which sex is part of. even if you have relationships that are primarily about fun sexy times, you’re probably going to do a lot of scheduling to maintain those relationships, or find new ones.
So that’s mostly true in patriarchal polygyny (one man multiple wives). In polyandrous (one woman multiple husbands) it doesn’t look like there’s much gendered abuse. And in polyamorous there’s not supposed to be any gendered inequality. Sometimes people are abused, but that’s more of a relationships have that problem situation.
cults often practice polygamy as a few men in power “marry” girls (teenagers or younger), and control the assets. this is a power imbalance that can easily be abused.
polyamory as a modern term is trying to differentiate from that. proponents emphasize enthusiastic consent (from all parties) and communication, and often will warn against any rigid hierarchy among the polycule members. that’s an ideal, so it’s certainly possible to find examples that fail, but the intent is that people are all equally respected.
There is a real phenomenon where many people try polyamory before they accept that their original relationship should end, then go back to just being single or start a different monogamous relationship.
This "transitional" polyamory is often looked down on but I think it's another honest attempt to deal with the pressures and problems of expected monogamy.
My friend did it. Initially it was because her SO became basically asexual and she was trying to make it work while also meeting her own needs, and she ended up leaving him for her polyamorous partner and they got married and have been together for ages and had a baby. Sometimes the way on is the way out I guess.
And this is exactly why obsessive polygamy monogamy is actually pretty toxic when you think about it. This kind of experience could also reasonably lead back to your partner, along with a renewed sense of dedication, if such a lapse of judgement was tolerated the way basically every other misstep in a marriage or serious relationship is tolerated.
I see couples forgive way worse shit than a bit of meaningless infidelity on a routine basis.
Do you mean people who feel strongly about having multiple wives or husbands? People who have many previous marriages? People who obsessively collect spouses? 😄
There’s also asexuality. Love your partner but don’t wanna fuck 'em? Get a divorce you deviant! Because apparently sex is required for a happy marriage and if you don’t have sex because you’re not interested in it, then you’re obviously a pervert or a prude who deserves to be unloved.
Ironically this is one of those things that’s easier to deal with in a poly context - your partner isn’t your one and only so if they’re ace and you’re not, you’re allowed to get those needs met elsewhere and still have a loving romantic relationship with them.
Unless you’re both asexual, or are open to the sexual one fucking around,
Yeah, but then you get back to the person in OP’s post telling people to get a divorce regardless. My point is that you can have a happy marriage and be poly and/or ace.
Edit: Also, I’d think that issue would come up long before marriage and would likely be solved by that point.
One would hope that you’d solve issues like that before getting married. Whether that means an open marriage, having a partner who’s also ace, finding ways to fulfill your partners needs without having sex yourself, etc.
You’re not wrong, but I think most married couples that involve someone who’s ace would have that problem solved by the time they get to marriage.
This is a bad post. Polyamory is NOT about sex and it’s NOT a fetish.
It can work extremely well and be extremely loving if done correctly. The problem is, it’s not as easy as people often think it is when trying to idealize it.
Communication is extremely important in every relationship and that only multiplies when you have more than one partner.
If you have a feeling of jealousy… Talk about it…
If you don’t think your partner is spending enough time with you… Talk about it…
If you aren’t enjoying sex with your partner… TALK ABOUT IT!
I’ve been with my fiancé for almost 4 years, my bf and I are celebrating our 1 year next month, and I have a new first date next Wednesday. My fiancé has even been with their nesting partner (who is monogamous) for 8 years now.
This all happened because we have clear ground rules and boundaries as well as active communication.
I’ve never felt more loved than when my fiancé helped me pick out my outfit for my first date with my bf.
I love them both so tremendously and it pisses me off when people tell me that isn’t possible or that all I care about is sex.
As with any relationship, you can either decide it’s not worth it to keep bringing up… Or if it matters a lot to you, you can break up.
Sometimes, even with a lot of communication, the relationship just doesn’t work. Not everyone is meant to be. Sometimes your needs are very different from your partner(s) needs and separation is the best way to make you both happier in the long run.
My nesting partner and I do not have a sexual relationship anymore, and that’s totally fine. We’re still in love and enjoy spending lots of time together. Polyamory is not about sex. I have other sexual partners sometimes, and that’s fine. My NP also has a girlfriend who she doesn’t have sex with either, and they get along like gangbusters.
For a lot of people partnerships, cohabitation, and sex are ALL conflated into one big, messy thing. For a lot of men there’s an amount of ownership in there too.
Well they have is all I can say. Two of them ended particularly badly when the person in them who encouraged the poly relationship up and left the person they invited to be poly. My one friend ended up suddenly homeless when her poly couple threw her out after she had moved across country to be with them, and another who had been encouraged by his wife to practice being poly ended up having said wife vacate the premises while he was away for a weekend and empty their bank account and change her number and vanish. Like it was pretty bad.
Right, but you surely have also seen many monogamous relationships also end badly.
Both of those examples could easily have happened with monogamy.
I could rattle off a bunch of poly relationships that have gone well. I know some folks that are raising a kid. They both have other partners. They’re all pretty happy. Been so for years
Another couple has also been together for years. The one of them has had other relationships for years while the other focused on her career. For the last year or two she’s got more time and is exploring dating. She’s having a blast. They’re all very happy.
There’s a friend I’ve known for years that’s done poly the whole time. He’s had some breakups over the years, but that’s just normal relationship stuff. None of them were to my knowledge catastrophic.
I can also rattle off monogamous relationships that went badly.
It’s absurd to be like “monogamous relationships sometimes end badly. Poly relationships sometimes end badly. The poly ones are due to poly.”
I think there are an unfortunate number of monogamous people who decide to try polyamory to fix or hold on to a dying relationship. It’s not a surprise that that often goes extremely poorly. It’s not for everyone and it’s not gonna fix any problems.
I’ve dated a couple of people who are poly, and while I’d always been in monogamous relationships, I was open to the idea. I don’t think love is a finite resource, and I’m not a jealous person at all, and it turns out, it doesn’t bother me at all. I also stay well away from anyone who thrives on drama, so all involved were very honest and adult about the whole thing. I wasn’t in a good headspace for any relationship at the time, so it didn’t work, but I’d absolutely be willing to try it again.
To me, polyamory is in the same category as cuckolding in the sense that it’s none of my business…but I think it’s weird fetish.
I don’t feel like it’s possible to love multiple people simultaneously and equally. Anecdotally I know two people who have been in poly relationships and they were messy, both ending with one monogamous couple and the remaining person getting cast out.
I know that doesn’t describe every poly relationship… that’s just my own secondhand experience and I haven’t seen anything to offset it.
But…it’s not my life so I wasn’t gonna stop them. I just wouldn’t recommend anyone try it
Ok. I was pretty clear that I was only speaking about the polyamory I’ve personally seen in my own life.
Meanwhile, you’ve come to this post to add absolutely nothing to the conversation. Not sure how you could write something so useless and then accuse me of having the the worst comment here.
Maven, a person with first-hand experience with polyamory, managed to refute my opinion while adding to the conversation.
You’re the comic underling popping out behind the boss to say “yeah, what they said!”
I’ve done polyamory for a long time and “it’s just a fetish” and “it doesn’t work” hit a nerve. I’m glad other people made more patient, effective, comments.
Thanks. I shouldn’t have called it a fetish but after being told otherwise, I didn’t want to be the kind of person to edit their comments to make themselves look better. I still do think that polyamory doesn’t work for the vast majority of people (which seems to be a popular opinion even with the polyamorous) but I’m not an outspoken critic or anything.
I WOULD still discourage my friends from trying it because…I know them very, very well. They’d be the “transitional” polyamory couples spoken about elsewhere in this post. But if they went for it, I wouldn’t look down on them for it. I never said anything negative to the two that have already tried and failed, either.
Polyamory is not a fetish and is not related to sex at all. People who practice polyamory CAN have sex but that’s not what polyamory is. The people who do poly just to get laid are the ones that fail.
(Source: currently engaged to my fiancé and about to celebrate my 1 year with my bf. Nothing sexual about it… Just a lot of love)
That’s the big thing. Polyamory is a LOT of work and most people don’t want to put that effort in.
It’s also just in general not for everyone. Nothing is for everyone… but I feel like every time I see people online generally talking about polyamory it’s always examples of people who didn’t want to put in the work, doing it poorly.
Just because it isn’t for everyone doesn’t mean it can never work. It’s a lot better for people to be talking about healthy ways to do it so people who would enjoy polyamory can do it correctly the first time.
Hence why I’d discourage people from trying it but wouldn’t interfere if they were already doing it. If it works, it works…but it doesn’t work for 99% of people.
The main issue is people who aren’t mature enough for ONE relationship thinking they can handle MULTIPLE relationships simultaneously.
Also, you hear a lot about the poly horror stories (sure, there are lots of them) but people seem to ignore the fact that normal relationships experience all the same horror stories.
Yep. And I’m not even poly. It would never work for me. But I’m not gonna be bitchy to other people because I don’t live their lifestyle. This is exactly the same as telling gay people to just go fuck a person of the opposite gender.
You do realize that lots of people have friends that perform parenting roles with their kids, right? E.g. Couples who are friends that each babysit for each other.
The event of the friendship ending has the same psychological effect on the children as having a poly partner leave the relationship.
A lot of these imagined “harms” and weird situations are regular events that people already experience. It’s the defamiliarization of seeing it in a setting that you perceive as weird that makes it seem harmful and/or weird.
You do understand that two people can not be married, and have kids together, right? Just because they're not married doesn't mean the mom or dad has no legal rights to the kid. The father is the father regardless of the relationship status of the parents and same for the mother.
Also, my dad wasn't poly, and he vacated my life all on his own.
Yep, all those kids who get more attention, more love, more money, more education… Really feel bad for them. Maybe one day they’ll be lucky and have a single parent who works all the time like I did. 🙄
If people want to practice polyamory I suppose that’s their business. I personally have known a lot of people who turned their lives upside down to be in polyamorous relationships and they generally always fall apart over jealousy. One person always ends up feeling left out usually.
If you want that and you can make it work though then more power to you!
I had a roommate who was bi and he moved like 4 states away to be in a poly relationship with like 5 other people and he moved into their house with them and everything. I saw an update from him that they had broken up and he was moving again like 3 months after that! It honestly just sounds exhausting
My friend moved to be part of a throuple across the country, with a husband and wife couple, and in two months he had kicked my friend out when she had nowhere to go.
Me and my two boyfriends are bisexual. We have been on a long distance relationship for almost 2 years and there never was a issue with jealousy between us. We are a family. We love each other and all we want is to stay with each other.
Out of curiosity, since they way you put it it’s “the three of us” which sound beautiful: How would you (meaning two of you) handle it if one of the others wanted to break out? I mean, break-ups happen, so I’m just wondering if you’ve ever thought about how you would handle being the “only two left” in that kind of scenario?
Sincerely, I’ve never thought much about it. It doesn’t seem like something that would happen to us.
But I have two friends who are a couple and have tried adding a third person to the relationship, but after some time this person ended breaking up with both of them. It was sad as any break up would be, but the two are still together.
It sounds like you might be a women from context, given you stated you are bi and have two boyfriends do you ever feel like you’re missing out on not having a girlfriend to fill in that need?
I’ve been with my wife for 5 years and have been poly from the start. My gf and I have been together for nearly as long and her and my wife get along as do I and her husband
I’ve been poly for 5ish years now and never had an issue. I’m engaged and I also have an amazing bf. It’s a lot of work but… It’s amazingly worth it when it works. I love my partners so much and I’m glad they have other people around them that can make them as happy as they can be.
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