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: polyamorous
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.
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.
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.
The short version is that Ark broke a rule. It was an important rule that was there for everyone’s safety and my sanity, but in the heat of the moment, he broke the rule. I felt betrayed, broken—and I was pissed off. I took the time to cool off and think about it and rationalize it, and I’ve done the best I could about it. I
Only fairly recently has polyamory developed an organized culture, and the language around it is still forming. Because of that, there is not complete agreement on how the words arising to fill the needs of the polyamorous are used.
People ask us all the time why we got married, if we’re not going to be exclusive. This is probably the question we get asked most often. For both of us, the answer is that we know we want to spend the rest of our lives with each other, regardless of who (or what) else comes up in the interim.