Browsing: negotiated non-monogamy

As we have moved through this vanilla phase, I’ve realized just how busy an ethical non-monogamist’s life actually is. Even though we haven’t had the time to actively date, we are still building and maintaining relationships that mean something to us. Some are long-time friends we miss. Some are new budding relationships that have fantastic promise. And some are just fun messages from brand new hotties we haven’t met yet, but would love to find the time to meet.

Relationships can have many levels of closeness and intertwinedness — from casual fuckbuddies to regular, serious girlfriend or boyfriend to long-term live-in life-long committed partners. The category that we think our relationship falls into affects the way we interact with that partner today and the vision we have for the future of that relationship. In the monogamous world, we talk about dating someone casually or say that someone is marriage material. In the poly world, people talk about primary and secondary relationships.

When I first started engaging in non-monogamy, I was living in a big American city with a large, liberal social network. It wasn’t that hard to find like-minded people. We moved from the US to Europe over a year ago and we’ve been celibate ever since.

I am so glad I’m not the male part of the swinging relationship. So much worry about the plumbing – getting hard, staying hard, holding back, and then trying to finish when it’s finally time. Viagra and Cialis and such little pills have done wonders but not conquered the problem entirely.