this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Hmm that's interesting. I thought it was mostly sexual.
There are people like that. You hear about their new partners all the time and see them constantly looking for new partners. That's not because poly is like that, but because these are the same people who would be serially monogamous if they wanted monogamy.
For me, monogamy just felt too restrictive. My wife and I both broke up with people who wanted monogamy not long before meeting and have always been poly. As a 22 year old I loved the idea of sex, but nearing 30 I love that I can have multiple happy and long term relationships. I love the fact that I could fall in love with someone new without risking losing my wife who I love dearly and cherish. And yeah I’ve been in two happy relationships for about 5 years now. And both my partners like each other and I like my girlfriend’s husband
Well at least you're the girlfriend's boyfriend, not her husband, lol.
I’m her girlfriend and her husband is quite happy with the situation. Just as she’s been when he’s had other partners. He actually set us up. The only reason he’s not seeing anyone else at the moment is that nobody else has really gotten his attention. Same reason my wife isn’t seeing anyone else at the moment. If my wife were to be interested in someone I’d encourage it, I love her and want her to pursue what her heart desires.
It’s annoying when monogamous people act like we’re all lying about experiencing compersion.
Man, do I feel this. Why is it so hard to believe that people can feel differently about things?
No, I'm not jealous and afraid my wife is going to leave me if she has sex with someone else. She isn't when I do that, either.
We'll eagerly discuss all the juicy details. She loves hearing about my adventures. She's more shy, so I hear more about who she'd like to be with rather than actual adventures. We both giggle and discuss people we'd totally bang and there really actually isn't an undercurrent of anxiety about it.
If I found someone that I started to fall in love with, isn't that an awesome thing? Love is wonderful! And the sort of person that I could love would be someone that my wife would, at the very least, like. How does this not sound like a wonderful situation to people?
Monogamy doesn't make sense to me, though I respect people's right to feel the way they do. If they feel jealousy, that's allowed. If they think it's better to have jealousy, then I'm confused, but whatever.
It's just weird that feeling differently gets such negative reactions and accusations of lying.
Exactly! Like, I get that some people are very bad at polyamory and are total wrecks about it. Those people weren’t good at monogamy either. It’s easy for casual acquaintances to miss that I’m poly because it’s not causing problems in my life. I have far more romantic problems from my wife’s clinical depression (that she’s had her whole life) and my girlfriend’s abundance of children (also not related to her polyamory) than I do from jealousy or anything like that.
Fuck I’m the boring old married lady even next to some monogamous friends of mine. We don’t do the whole juicy talk thing, but we do get happy at the other’s happiness.
Everything you said here was so good honestly.
I am extremely happy whenever my partners find someone who can help make them as happy as I try to. I want my partners to have the happiest possible life ever and it's unfair to everyone involved to stop them from being able to get that happiness.
I think something a lot of monogamous people forget when talking about poly is that jealousy is a pretty natural thing to happen... Even in polyamorous relationships.
I've felt jealous before in my situation, the difference is that I talked with my partners and found a good solution and set of boundaries that made everyone happy vs trying to control their time and life.
I said this in another comment but the most loved I've ever felt was when my fiancé helped me pick out my outfit for my first date with my bf (who I'm also to a year with!!). I also love helping them both with their relationship struggles and life issues and so on. I love them both tremendously.
Growing up in the shroud of monogamy, there is something very freeing and beautiful when I talked to my gf about talking to someone seriously and saying I liked them and wanted to date them. Her encouraging me and celebrating and smiling with me when we both finally had the courage to tell each other our feelings. Helpfully nudged by my boyfriend who clearly noticed we were falling for each other.
I have a lot of love to give, I cherish all of my partners. They are my closest friends and supporters and I welcome the diversity of my desires and needs.
It can be really hard to deal with too, having multiple relationships is something you really really need to work with and takes a lot of attention and care to do it right.
I feel like compersion is one of those things people can't really "get" until they experience it themselves
That’s totally fair, but also I think a lot of people need to accept that they don’t need to get something to respect it or believe people expressing it. Look at the comments in this thread, there’s polyamorous people explaining our feelings and reasoning next to people asserting that they think it’s just a fetish.
I completely agree, but it's a big ask of some people for them to respect something they don't even think is real. If they get some sort of basis for understanding, it's at least possible then.
Bigot
for a lot of people in long term polyamory, it's about intimacy, which sex is part of. even if you have relationships that are primarily about fun sexy times, you're probably going to do a lot of scheduling to maintain those relationships, or find new ones.
And today you learned you thought wrong.
You may be thinking of "swinging" or some other variant of non monogamy.
The old saw is that its mostly scheduling and deconflicting
Don't worry it's just like when furries say it's not sexual
Like OK we'll nod and smile and maybe they're the golden case but everyone else is sex obsessed - poly community drama is always about sex.
This is such a wild statement. Guess I have news to the ace poly people I know.
Don't worry they know, they'll give you the official sanitized lines of course but they'll be thinking 'yep it do be like that'
You have no clue what you're talking about
Sure, if that makes you feel better...
It's not mostly sexual, it's entirely sexual. As in, sex is the entire point of being in any kind of non-monogamous relationship.
You know what you call a relationship that doesn't have sex? A platonic friendship. If it really wasn't about the sex, then they would call them friends.
EDIT: I see I've gotten the polysexual people angry with pointing out their bullshit. :D
Do you think monogamous relationships are all about sex? I think you think that love is all about sex, and you're wrong in thinking that is a general truth. In actuality I honestly find your point of view disturbing.
A power outage killed my response as I was writing, so I'm going to try to remember the salient points. There's a lot to unpack here.
All about sex? No. BUT sex--and specifically the lack of sex with other people--is the single defining characteristic of a monogamous relationship. If there is neither sex, nor is there a limitation on having sex with other people, then it's not a monogamous relationship. Love is hopefully a component of a monogamous relationship, but it's not necessary to love your partner to be in a monogamous relationship.
I love my parents. I'm not in a polysexual relationship with them. (...Thank fuck, ew.)
I love my friend Jeff like the brother I wish I had. I'm not in a multiamorous relationship with him.
I love my spouse. I am in a monogamous relationship with them.
Being in a monogamous relationship with my spouse does not mean that I can not love other people. Being monogamous with my spouse doesn't mean that I can't still love my parents, or Jeff. It doesn't even mean that I can't be physically or sexually attracted to other people. It does mean that I can't have sex with any other people, and it means that engaging in activities with other people that are sexual or are otherwise linked to erotic--romantic--love would put me on very, very thin ice. A private dance that I paid for at a club? Probably okay, but very questionable. Getting (consensually) fingered by a dancer? Definitely not okay. Getting a private dance from someone that I also have a deep personal friendship with? That's several flyover states away from okay.
So, then, if sex is not a defining characteristic, a necessary prerequisite, of a multiamorous relationship, then how does it differ from the love that I feel for my parents, or for my closest friends? I said, "[...] sex is the entire point of being in any kind of non-monogamous relationship." I stand by this, because once you remove all of the sexual elements, it is no longer any different from a platonic love. It is the sexual element that makes it a different kind of relationship entirely. The only things that you cannot do with a platonic friend, and have the relationship remain platonic, is anything erotic.
Deeply intimate relationships can be entirely platonic; my friendship with Jeff is frequently very intimate, because we can both discuss deeply person, painful things with the other without fear of judgement or loss of that intimacy. My spouse has been developing very intimate relationships with some of the people that they work with; that does not affect our monogamy. Citing intimacy as a primary driver for polysexual relationships simply isn't plausible. If intimacy is what they want, then, again, why does the relationship need to be non-monogamous, since monogamy goes not exclude other emotionally intimate relationships? If you can have non-sexual cuddling--which I'm told is a thing, and--as an autistic person--sounds like absolute hell--then what, exactly, do you gain from being multiamorous other than the ability to choose to have sex with more than one person?
Exactly what do you suppose is the difference between multiple deeply intimate platonic friendships and a multiamorous relationship?
Revisiting
and connecting that to the original point of the meme, I do think that if your partner makes a unilateral choice to discontinue all sexual activity, that no person should be expected to be bound to their original agreement to be monogamous. If your spouse is no longer willing to have sex with you (and I don't mean at any particular time, I mean in general), then they also lose any right to have any say in who you do have sex with.
So yeah it's pretty clear your polyphobic and do conflate romantic relationships with being sexual.
Ask other people about their views on monogamy and I think you can find some that would call your emotional dependence on friends cheating. Clearly a red flag for most and abusive, but your post is a big red flag for me as well.
I have some questions for you,
Is going on a date with a friend ok? Is kissing someone romantically ok? Is cuddling and holding hands ok? Is emotional dependence ok? Is flirting ok? Is going on a vacation with them ok?
Romance and sex
I won't deny that for me personally as a sexual person there is also a sexual element, but one of my partners is ace so for her it's all romantic.
...Wut? How am I emotionally dependent on them? It's an intimate relationship, not a co-dependent one. Taking the view that a close and deep friendship is emotional dependence is a rather grim view, don't you think?
I'm going to briefly interject: romance is sex without the denoument. Romance is sexual. A person that says they're asexual can give and receive a lap dance, and yet a lap dance is still fundamentally sexual.
If you call it a date, and label it as a romantic activity? No. If you're going out with a friend to do something you are both interested in doing? Yes. Dates are about intent.
Is kissing someone romantically okay? No, because romance is fundamentally about sexuality.
Is cuddling and holding hands okay? It depends on intent. Is it intended romantically by either person? Then no. Otherwise? Yes.
Is emotional dependence okay? No. But that's not okay in a relationship either. No person should ever have their emotional well-being dependent on another.
Is flirting okay? No, again, that's fundamentally about sex and sexuality. (Which should be obvious, since people of all genders mistake simply being friendly for flirting, and vice versa, all the time.)
Is going on a vacation with them ok? Of course it is, when it's something that my partner has zero interest in.
...How so, exactly? You're more than welcome to do as you choose, and I have zero interest in stopping you. Assuming that everyone is enthusiastically consenting, it is neither my circus, nor my monkeys. Edit: My spouse is free to do as they please as well; should they choose to have multiple partners, that is there choice. I will immediately leave, but I won't stop them.
On the other hand, I think that it's absolutely delusional to claim that sex is not the defining factor in multiamorous relationships, and to insist that all other people accept that delusion as gospel truth. I was, for a number of years, in multiamorous relationships. I noted that, in all of my partners, and in all of the other multiamorous people I knew, people were always open--at least some degree--to the next new-shiny. Time is zero-sum; you can't put in time with your new-shiny without also taking time away from somewhere else. That didn't bother me for a long time, because I was the same. Then it did bother me, because I realized that what I could never find stability in that.;I could never count on being anyone's first priority all of the time, nor could I ever reasonably promise that to anyone. (Of course, you can't truly find that in monogamy either. But monogamy as least has that veneer, even if people don't always live up to the ideal they claim.)
That wasn't meant as an accusation or anything, nor was I claiming you had or have an unhealthy emotional dependence. There are certainly stages to intimacy, emotionally, romantic, and sexually.
And that really helps tie together what I am trying to explain here. No partnership is inherently anything, people have different needs, desires, and experience the world in vastly different ways. People have varying degrees of emotions, romanticism, and sexuality. Your responses and how you said them did appear phobic or angry/dismissive at the least so that's why I decided I should just dismiss you as a person disrespecting of my lifestyle.
I think it is clear to me now you either had a bad experience and were traumatized by a poor partner, or simply realized you were monogamous. That is totally ok, I'm glad you realize who you are and are happy with it. Though it is certainly easier desiring a societal norm, see our discussion on what I am, where I am defending and trying to explain the vastness of experiences I and others have. You don't ever have to defend monogamy in our society. As for your views on relationships and sexuality, I still will deny that partnerships are always ever sexual. It's definitely possible, reading what you've said, you are some measure of aromantic to tie everything to being sexual in origin and meaning within a romantic gesture or close non-platonic intimacy. That's ok too, that is how you experience the world, but that's not how everyone is or feels about things. If that view is a response to your experiences, I'm sorry that you've only ever experienced things as a pretense to sex, but there is a lot more out there.
Are arranged marriages entirely about sex in your opinion? Or political marriages?
First: I notice that you've made no effort to refute my claim; you've changed the subject instead. So I'll ask directly: if polyamorous relationships aren't about sex, then why not simply have friendships? If sex was absolutely out of the question in any polyamorous relationship, how would they differ from any other deeply intimate friendship? (ETA - intimate friendships have changed over the centuries; things that we would consider bordering on sexual without being overtly sexual were much more normal among same-sex, nominally heterosexual friends up through the 20th C.)
Second: Yes, arranged marriages (and political marriages fall into that category) are entirely about sex. Or, to be more complete, they're about producing children that have a specific parentage, which generally requires that the two people have sex. (Adopted children are not usually considered an acceptable substitution for blood in arranged marriages. Similarly, the children of concubines do not have rights of inheritance.) Charles was expected to marry Diana and have children with her--which absolutely meant that he was obligated to have sex with her, even though he and Camilla were very much in love with each other--in order for the royal line to continue.
No my point wasnt to refute your claim so why would I?
I was simply asking out of genuine curiosity. Dont be so defensive, they werent sarcastic or rhetorical questions