I ended my last blog with a question: What are some reasons that couples take a break from swinging? Over dinner with the Wonderfuls, we learned their answer – they were not stepping toward monogamy again. Instead, they had stepped in the opposite direction toward polyamory.
Browsing: poly
The prompt for this post was a misunderstanding between myself and a local member of the sex-positive community. He posted a status update on a social networking site stating that he was “seek[ing] bisexual, poly switch. Must be decisive, consistent and not fear commitment.” I re-posted his statement on my Twitter account, thinking to myself, “Wow. That actually sounds a whole lot like what I’m looking for.” I was surprised to see words that I found so very apt coming out of someone else’s mouth – or, I suppose, fingers. I was pleased and impressed.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
A comment came to me on the last blog that I posted in regards to…
When someone is asking questions about my lifestyle, the one I get most often seems…
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.