Lets face it. Anyone that spends any amount of time on the Swingset is bound to encounter people that are interested in you or your partner sexually, when the same is not returned by one or both of you. Even vanillas deal with this, but only have to consider their personal feelings. We have our significant others to think about as well. Chemistry is a must. The attraction need not be physical necessarily, mental attraction is a powerful thing as well. Regardless of what it is that attracts the two of you, it must be there or things are just not gonna work out.
Browsing: non-monogamy
When you add more people to a relationship, things get complicated. One relationship can be a challenge. Adding more relationships to your life is not only going to increase the joy and love, but also the drama. With each added person, the issues don’t increase linearly – they seem to increase exponentially because there are what I think of as “ricochet effects.” The bullet may have been intended for one person, but the rebound can hit others as well. One person’s or one couple’s drama can infect all. It wasn’t clear to me that it worked that way when we got into a relationship with Julian and Hanne two years ago.
I have seen a few people in my years of being Poly who say or infer that they have a constant need to be told they aren’t being replaced. This tends to be a recurring problem with some newbies or people interested in exploring what the non-monogamous life is all about.
Hello, my name is Star. I have a husband. My husband has a girlfriend. His girlfriend has another boyfriend, who has a wife, and his wife happens to also be her girlfriend. Yep. Need a diagram yet? Well, it’s a good thing that I happen to have one prepared.
The question is: Do I sit her down and have a little chat about the situation? Something like, “You know that Julian is my boyfriend and Hanne is daddy’s girlfriend. I want to tell you that this is unusual – most people who are married don’t also have a boyfriend or girlfriend. They only have their husband or wife. Most of your friends and their families would think it was strange. You might want to be cautious when mentioning it to them.”
They’re certainly not in the same category as life’s big questions, but the Lifestyle and my eagerness for sexual exploration have presented me with some new issues to ponder. They sort of drift through at random when I’m stopped at a traffic light or staring into space over a hot chai.
Some readers may wonder: Why polyamory? Well, for us, this came from the understanding that we do not control the other person’s sexuality. We are very sexual creatures and we are attracted to whomever we happen to be attracted to. We were comfortable in our sexuality and our relationship, and through much discussion we came to an understanding that physical intimacy does not constitute infidelity. Deception is infidelity, but what Ally and I do is right out in front of each other. Full disclosure.
There are a lot of gray areas in life, but I’ve tended to live mine in a black-or-white, all-or-nothing sort of way. Standing in the middle requires a lot of stamina and patience. The first I can manage if something is worth the effort, but the second? Um, yeah… Pardon me as I try to shake off a sudden vision of friends and family laughing so hard that they’re gasping for breath.
We were with some good friends that we had soft swapped with before and I am pretty sure they knew we were ready to full swap. They had heard about my full swap experience from me and probably through the grape vine.
Jealousy is very common in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. However, in monogamous relationships it’s much easier to engineer the way you and your partner interact with others to minimize activities that trigger jealousy. In poly relationships, you’re nearly guaranteed to regularly encounter jealousy in either yourself or your partners.