Big sigh. Every time this topic comes up, the same kind of questions come up. Usually there’s a lot of ignorance and some malice, and it’s kind of tiring. But, most people are probably talking in good faith , even if they’re firing from the hip.
First off, not all non monogamous relationship types are the same. Swinging tends to just be about the meat. Open relationships often are hierarchical and have some people as secondary “fun but not serious”, and often have one “primary” relationship. Polyamory and relationship anarchy tend to be less about hierarchy. But also sometimes people will use the same word and mean different things.
Common questions and responses
“This sounds exhausting”
Cool. So does rock climbing and marathon running. Don’t do it if you’re not interested.
“I don’t have time for that”
Cool. I also don’t have time for some things , so I don’t do them. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to post on a topic about baseball that watching all those games takes up too much of my day.
“It’s just cheating”
No. Cheating is when you break the agreed upon rules. If your rules say “you can fuck other people” and then you fuck other people, you have not cheated.
“It’s just dating. I dated a few people before I met my spouse.”
Not really. It’s common for people to go on multiple dates before they go exclusive. In those cases it’s typical for the emotional connection to be more shallow. You’re just getting to know someone.
With some forms of non monogamy, people can form meaningful emotional bonds with multiple people.
Note that a polycule doesn’t have to be a closed shape. A can date B, B can date C, but A and C can have any or no relationship to each other.
“I want an emotional connection”
Many polyamorous people form emotional connections with their partners.
“This all sounds complicated”
Many things in life are. Pathfinder is a complicated tabletop game, but you don’t have to play it. Don’t engage with it if it doesn’t sound worth the effort. You can play simpler games instead and be perfectly happy.
“I knew a couple that did this and they broke up”.
Cool. I knew a monogamous couple and they broke up.
“But they broke up because of the open relationship!”
Did they? Or were they unhappy for other reasons? Also, I knew a couple that broke up because of WoW. Does that mean WoW will doom a relationship?
“I’ve never seen one work”
I have. Also many poly people don’t talk about it with strangers. You might know people who are happily non monogamous and they just never told you.
“I can’t even find one relationship”
Yeah it’s hard out there. It’s mostly a numbers game, and location is a big factor. Don’t believe incel or manosphere mythology.
Counterintuitively, pursuing non monogamy for me meant fewer dates. It’s a smaller pool of candidates.
“I’m too jealous for this”
Thank you for sharing your character flaw. The first step towards addressing a problem is usually recognizing it.
That said, most people experience jealousy sometimes. A mark of maturity and strength is recognizing it and handling it well. Talking about how you feel insecure when your partner doesn’t text you for a few days is fine. Stalking them to see what they’re up to is not.
"What about STDs??"
Use protection. Single people dating get by. If you feel the risk is unacceptable, don’t engage in non monogamy
“What about families? Kids??”
Kids are pretty flexible. The poly familes I knew, the kids were doing great. Everyone in the polycule loved them. It was like having extra aunts and uncles, mostly.
“But what if there’s a breakup??”
When my aunt divorced Uncle Steve I was sad because Steve was cool, but my parents explained to me that sometimes relationships end. It’s not different.
“You’re being really condescending right now”
Yeah. It’s one of those eternal September / for me it was Tuesday topics for me.
“But you made me feel bad, so I’m not really reading your content”
Yeah, that happens. Read this comic about it: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
Ok, I think I got all the common ones.
YES THANK YOU
was waiting for someone to say this
I’m jealous… Of people who can find the right other partners.
How do people have the free time to have multiple relationships? It sounds exhausting.
It can also be very rewarding.
I had a partner where we could post-sex pillow talk for hours. It was very relaxing, and it’s the thing I miss most about hooking up with them. We’re still friends, but their life got too full and we had to call off romantic involvement.
Which is to say that, yeah, the time involved can be an issue. Maybe one of you needs to step back. The time you do spend with them can still be worth the effort.
Let alone having A relationship. I still have to sort my own baggages before I enter into one.
I would love to have multiple partners so that more incomes are coming into the household
back then we called it “swinging” and it wasn’t rare.
now it’s an open relationship or “relationship anarchy”
i’m not a swinger. tried it. never will be. glad people can enjoy it.
there’s no “right way” to have a relationship.
Swingers are a specific kind of polyamory. They tend to be short hookups, though sometimes with people you’ve met and hooked up with before.
Nothing wrong with it as long as it’s all consensual, but I have found swingers to not always be on board with what’s going on with the rest of polyamory. In my area, they tend to be surprisingly conservative. There will be tons of cars in the parking lot for the hotel takeover with NRA and MAGA stickers. They accept bisexual women, but often are weird about any other form of LGBTQ+ expression. That may or may not be the case in your area.
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People should identify less and relationship more.
My cousin and his wife did this and then one day my cousin and their new girlfriend dumped his wife
i dunno how i feel about this. on one hand, i wouldn’t mind having a fuck buddy, but on the other hand i just feel like committal relationships are better because im a emotional person. i dunno but i don’t have to worry becuase i know ill prolly be single and involuntary celibate for the rest of my life!
I’d rather be alone thanks
I’m not going to judge people who try open relationships, but I’ve literally never seen them work. It’s also nothing new. Swingers were a thing decades ago. I’ve seen marriages implode, people end up needing therapy, and the like. I have a friend who is poly and has multiple people in her relationship group. She tried to tell me “how great it is” and then the next day I hear about the latest group drama. I’m like “yeah fuck that noise”.
It’s kind of like communism. I love the idea of communism. Equality for everybody and everybody has an equal say in the means of production. However, it only takes one prick not pulling their weight on purpose to abuse the system and it all comes crumbling down, which is why so many communist countries have a dictator forcing everyone to “be equal”.
The same is true of open relationships. It only takes one possessive or damaged person to blow up the whole group. The weakest link in most things is the fact that some people fucking suck.
It seems you’re
correlatingconflating “polyamory” (non-monogamous relationships) with “polycules” (relationships with more than two people). Not all polyamory is a polycule and not all polycules are necessarily permanent; nor have their members exclusive with each other.Sometimes polyamory looks like a marriage where both members have okayed having sex with other people. Sometimes it’s groups of “swinger” marriages where they “swap” members. Sometimes it’s just a person who regularly casually hooks up with others. I’d argue that what people consider monogamous relationships have a bit of wiggle room. Life is complicated; people are complicated.
I think you mean “conflating”, not correlating. I’m not comparing two disparate data points.
Both of the things you described are the same sides of a coin, but with the commitment slider moved around a bit. Much of what I said applies to both.
Polycules, in your description, might be more “successful”, but that’s only because there isn’t any real commitment. If the relationship falls apart, oh well move on. That’s barely a tick on the slider from a fuck buddy and two ticks away from one night stands.
Again, everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want. Freedom in sexuality is important. I just don’t think these relationships are successful in the majority of cases and I prefer a stable relationship with someone I know will be there throughout my whole life. I have no doubt that I’ll die before I ever considered leaving my SO because I’m in it for the long haul.
yes - did mean “conflating”. mb.
I mean, I’ve seen a lot of monogamous relationships fail too.
Not denying that. Monogamy between incompatible partners who don’t communicate happens all the time.
I’m something more than friends with a guy in a open relationship, and I just want to see him more than I get to. He wouldn’t mind me seeing other people, but I don’t want other people. I want him. 😩
Oh young people.
The silents and boomers tried this crap too.
Raised a generation of angry Gen-X kids through weekend visitation rights.
I had very few friends whose parents hadn’t been divorced from some form of this (cheating or swapping).
Some couples survived but the marriages were strained.
“Traditional” meaning “the last 2,000 out of 300,000 years”… Not to mention how it was only the norm because it was forced thru powerful organizations and not everyone just choosing it.
Monogamy and Abrhamic values are nothing but a fad on the timeline of human existence.
We ain’t built for that shit. Some people are and that’s fine, some aren’t and that’s cool too.
There’s a reason we’re not all built the same.
Abraham himself wasn’t monogamous.
Nor all muslims, who are following an abrahamic religion
It’s almost like everything in nature is random
Less random and more “shotgun approach”.
My wife and I have been poly from the start of our relationship and it’s been great. That said we’ve also long held a commitment to healthy emotional management
Can’t speak for anyone else but I will never do an open relationship. Either you are with me or you aren’t. Your choice.
K
I chose to be with you.
Now kith
You’re not a weirdo are you, SatansMaggotyCumFart?
uh oh, now you two are stuck together
Leave those two love birds be <3
I guess it was a wet SatansMaggotyCumFart
Like two knotted dogs.
And that’s totally fine to have your preference. It’s not just a “your choice” situation. Communication at the onset and throughout a relationship should help weed out others who are not monogamous.
Who the fuck gives a shit anyway.
I’ve dated two women. Two. And you know what I’ve learned?
Jack fucking shit. The first woman abused me for a decade, the second was only one date.
The idea of people dating is one thing. The idea of people hooking up is a different one. But The idea of people fucking outside of their committed relationship is so vastly foreign to my simple experience I’m beginning to wonder if the universe is conspiring to isolate me from humanity.
No conspiracy, let me shed some light. First, open and poly relationships don’t work if anyone involved is especially possessive. I don’t mean like a little jealous, or slightly insecure (that can be worked through) I mean one person expects a fair bit of say over one or multiple others lives.
Assuming you now only have a pool of a few reasonably well adjusted emotionally people (well adjusted socially is nice but not requisite) you can now just have N people agree they like each other and want to be together, but like occasionally hook up outside the group either under some arbitrary rule such as being in different zip codes from everyone else or just in general so long as proper precautions are taken. You have a core group of N people who are emotionally and financially intertwined and N+X people who happen to have all hooked up.
It’s a fine system, have almost never been monogamous, and it’s just like the times I was monogamous except no one is going to be upset about random hookups unless there was a generally accepted rule broken. I also personally find a core group of N=3 to be the roughly ideal number, but everyone’s mileage will vary.
Though I suspect that societal normalization will be informed by the economic situation. The reality is if you can’t afford to live without 3 incomes everyone will eventually organize around 3 person core households and society will defend the new tradition or whatever.
Of course somewhere in there a lot of people have to give up on religious and social hangups but that’s already in progress if the number of articles like this coming out is steadily increasing (it is)
And then there’s my autistic ass that just sees a fuckton of socialization rules there and I’m already panicking
Right there with you buddy. I struggle bad enough trying to figure out wtf I’m supposed to be doing in monogamous relationships. This polygamy shit is crazy to me.
Bro I’m with you I’m not even autistic and this shit just seems emotionally exhausting.
You really don’t need a lot of rules, I know a lot of people swear by stuff like relationship contracts and the like. But realistically that’s never been something I’ve pursued and that does seem incredibly overwhelming. Current relationship the rules are as follows: don’t bring STDs home, don’t bring people over during normal sleeping hours without approval, preferably a couple days of notice; and don’t become emotionally unavailable otherwise it’s not really a relationship. That’s it.
That just sounds like a bunch of friends with benefits. The thing that defined a relationship imo is the valuation you put on your time spent with someone. If you enjoy being with them more than anyone else, its worth pursuing a relationship. And I simply dont see how thats possible with mutliple people unless youre “dating” the group and not any individual member. Or unless you have nothing but free time on your hands. As an austist, i find it difficult but managble to handle my personal hygene, work responsiblilities, and sleep on the same day. Adding in social time and r&r time or “me” time, and it becomes extremely difficult to manage my time daily. Add in a relationship, and my life would be maxed. I cant imagine handling multiple relationships, which is what it sounds like youre describing.
To be clear, im of the mind that is people want to be polygamous, there is absolutely nothing I have to say about it. Its not my thing, but I’d like to understand it. I don’t need to to support its existance indirectly by not speaking out against it. But I would still like to, hence having discussions with people whose views differ. This just feels like the type of topic people are going to get heated about.
I don’t disagree necessarily, I would describe the woman who’s part of a different poly that we hook up with occasionally as a friend with benefits situation, though I’d be open to changing that dynamic if she was. But very much the stable and lasting poly relationships I’ve been in were effectively group dating. Like not to say there was never separate dates here and there, but very much most things are communal. I’m with you on barely having enough spoons to maintain the minimum required hygiene and meet general social expectations, I couldn’t handle a situation where I’m going on multiple dates with different people every week. Been there. Tried that. It wasn’t sustainable. But a core group where individual members just happen to have FWBs is perfectly manageable in my experience, though keeping track of paramours can be a pain since I’m really bad with names.
Having that close core group also comes with benefits such as someone almost always being available and even if not all interests are mutual you’ll share some with one, some with another, and a lot more time can be spent together with someone your close with working on projects or getting way to deep into philosophy or lore.
And to be clear I’m of the mind that people can be monogamous if they want, I just don’t get it. It feels to possessive and limiting. I don’t want to and literally can’t be someone’s everything and don’t expect any one other person to be my everything either. Probably helps no kids are involved nor can they become so biologically with who I’m currently with. Kids seem to complicate the fuck out of relationships from what I’ve seen. So at least in our case that can’t become a thing without mutual agreement. Not to say kids require monogamy, that’s not true, I’ve seen it work without that being the case, but only twice.
Why would you say its possessive? Its more about avoiding drama and just having one person you know you can count on. There’s enough drama in a mono relationship without having to pick sides.
I tend to view telling someone what they can and can’t do as being possessive. Demanding monogamy is therefore possessive. It’s taking away agency not as bad or as possessive as saying you can’t have friends who are X. Which is probably the most commonly recognized form of such behavior, but it’s on the same continuum in my mind.
It’s only risky business if your relationship is defined by sex. People who would stay together even without the sex (because they like each other that much anyway) are generally going to be fine.
