What could possibly go wrong...? Honestly, for the few people I know who went through a "polyamorous" phase, it broke down at some point because it's so easy to get awkward (sorry, "weird" sounded...
What could possibly go wrong...?
Honestly, for the few people I know who went through a "polyamorous" phase, it broke down at some point because it's plain fucking weird so easy to get awkward (sorry, "weird" sounded so dismissive, I'm just talking about personally having seen it go badly for painfully obvious reasons). Like, everyone can live life however they want and clearly there's people who want to try this but there's also a reason why people, when having the choice, tend to go for monogamous relationships.
This also doesn't pair well with what I heard about the psychological impact of the lockdowns. I don't think it applies here, but they're saying the number of domestic abuse cases are rising. Being this close with someone for weeks and not having planned for it at all is just a recipe for interpersonal disaster. I'm in a very harmonious relationship but even I am noticing an uptick of lash-outs.
The same way why people, when having the choice, tend to go for heterosexual relationships? 😅 I think it's unfair to compare this to a choice. This is just how some of us are wired. This is how I...
there's also a reason why people, when having the choice, tend to go for monogamous relationships.
The same way why people, when having the choice, tend to go for heterosexual relationships? 😅
I think it's unfair to compare this to a choice. This is just how some of us are wired.
it's plain fucking weird.
This is how I feel about monogamous relationships. I have absolutely zero qualms about going to spend time with my partner in oakland, who lives with someone who is the girlfriend of another one of my partners. Frequently all 4 of us are there together and it's extremely natural to me.
Agreed. I think like most human behavior, it's a combination of nature and nurture. I like to think of it as biology placing some outer limits on possible behavior and then interactions with the...
I'm not even sure "wired/choice" is a good binary to use here. For me, it was kind of a hybrid of the two?
Agreed. I think like most human behavior, it's a combination of nature and nurture. I like to think of it as biology placing some outer limits on possible behavior and then interactions with the world helping to set where you actually sit. Over time it may shift around as those interactions differ.
Same. We’ve got six poly people in our house for lockdown. It’s great! Last night me and my partner and her husband and her other partner and another roommate watched Picard together. :)
Same. We’ve got six poly people in our house for lockdown. It’s great! Last night me and my partner and her husband and her other partner and another roommate watched Picard together. :)
With all due respect, fuck you, lol. It's clearly a cultural thing. That's like implying I'm a homophobe for criticizing clerical celibacy. If you accept people as being flawed, all these flaws...
The same way why people, when having the choice, tend to go for heterosexual relationships? 😅
With all due respect, fuck you, lol. It's clearly a cultural thing. That's like implying I'm a homophobe for criticizing clerical celibacy.
If you accept people as being flawed, all these flaws tend to bring up the complications that monogamy solves. I apologize for the "fucking weird" part and there must be people for whom polyamorous relationships work, but reading that interview makes it so clear he's uncomfortable with the situation and it doesn't seem sustainable.
Well, I'm not denying that. I also have to apologize, I'm using my gossip voice to talk on a website visited by thousands of people I don't know. Basically, I have a specific friend who I saw...
😂 just pointing out it's a silly way of looking at it, it's definitely a questionable analogy
Well, I'm not denying that. I also have to apologize, I'm using my gossip voice to talk on a website visited by thousands of people I don't know. Basically, I have a specific friend who I saw getting burned by this and it kinda annoys me on a personal level to see people not emotionally equipped for it jump into it as almost a dare with the universe. I just want people to be happy. If a polyamorous relationship makes everyone involved happy, that's fucking perfect, I'm not here to put every person on earth in a box. I'm just saying it's hard and people underestimating the emotional effort can get horribly burned.
Yay! Me too 💜💜 Oh absolutely. They are typically more work, in my experience, than non-poly relationships and as you've stated: this is not a good mindset. One of my partners basically has all of...
I just want people to be happy.
Yay! Me too 💜💜
I'm just saying it's hard and people underestimating the emotional effort can get horribly burned.
Oh absolutely. They are typically more work, in my experience, than non-poly relationships and as you've stated:
it kinda annoys me on a personal level to see people not emotionally equipped for it jump into it as almost a dare with the universe.
this is not a good mindset. One of my partners basically has all of their other partners doing this to some level or another. They are simply not mature enough for a proper poly relationship or are not treating their partners very equitably.
This is really unnecessarily judgey. I'm not poly myself but there are certainly a lot weirder things in life. You could use "people tend to do x" for any number of things, including straight...
it's plain fucking weird. Like, everyone can live life however they want and clearly there's people who want to try this but there's also a reason why people, when having the choice, tend to go for monogamous relationships.
This is really unnecessarily judgey. I'm not poly myself but there are certainly a lot weirder things in life. You could use "people tend to do x" for any number of things, including straight relationships.
Hah. Okay this is so one sided it is funny to me. I’m currently on lockdown with my recent ex partner and her new partner. We’re poly. Upstairs there’s also a partner of mine, her husband, and one...
Hah. Okay this is so one sided it is funny to me. I’m currently on lockdown with my recent ex partner and her new partner. We’re poly. Upstairs there’s also a partner of mine, her husband, and one of her partners. Also a cat.
I never liked monogamy. Lots of people, as you say “tend to go for monogamous relationships”. But of course they do! That’s all I ever learned about. People like you said anything else was “plain fucking weird”.
Well I’ve read the books on polyamory. The foundational text The Ethical Slut, and newer more balanced books like More Than Two. Actually polyamory is not weird. People having multiple relationships of many different flavors throughout history is an extremely normal human thing. It only seems weird because many cultures have pretended like monogamy is all there is.
I am MUCH happier with polyamory. I’ve been in regular therapy for years, and he encouraged me to read the books, to start telling my monogamous partners I wanted to be poly, and when those relationships inevitably ended to finally only seek out other poly people. It has been several years since my last “monogamous but i don’t want to lose you so I’ll try poly even if it’s painful” relationship. Now it’s only people who themselves want to be poly.
It’s one of the best things things to ever happen to me. To discover this. The speed, the flow, the pace. It’s all right for me. Years ago with a monogamous break up, it basically immediately ended any connection she and I had. After years together, I was devastated. With my most recent break up, with a relationship of similar duration, the pain is dramatically lower. Even though she has a new partner, she can spend time with me without threatening her other relationship. I’m working on letting go, but it’s nice that we can still see each other and even still cuddle! Honestly monogamous break ups where all of a sudden you stop spending any time with your friend of years because your new partner feels threatened - that seems so unhealthy to me.
You don’t have to like poly. You be and do what feels right for you! But please understand, there are many of us out here that find monogamy weird. It’s a personal preference, not an objective fact, whether poly is weird or normal.
I feel like this conversation is headed towards a discussion about human psychology that very few of us are qualified for. I'm not op, but in defense of the 'weird' comment, I don't think it was...
I feel like this conversation is headed towards a discussion about human psychology that very few of us are qualified for. I'm not op, but in defense of the 'weird' comment, I don't think it was intended to be deragatory. 'Weird' and 'perfectly acceptable' are not mutually exclusive. I had a beer the other night that tasted like a jalapeno popper and it was fucking weird. Delicious, but weird.
I'm glad this thread started, because I haven't met anyone that's poly relationship, so it's interesting to see different perspectives. I'm not sure these answers really clarify some of (for lack of a better term) the 'weirdness' though. The thing that makes polyamory 'weird' for a lot of people is how it seems to contradict everything non-poly people understand about things like jealousy and envy in the context of an intimate relationship. It probably has more to do with jealousy than the idea of having feelings for more than one person. Most people have probably experienced the latter, but can't comprehend the former. Wanting to cuddle with more than one person? Easy. Watching your partner go upstairs to cuddle somone else and not feeling sad about it? Not easy.
Clearly it works for some people (good for you, you fucking zen masters 😉), but for others it is so far out of the ordinary that it's difficult to put into words, hence the 'weird' comment. I'm not sure how much of this is learned from living in a society that has made monogamy the standard for many generations. Jealousy seems to appear at an early age and not just in the context of intimate relationships; but like I said, I'm not sure if there are a lot of people that can answer that question. I am interested, if you don't mind sharing, if and/or how jealousy plays a role in those relationships. So far neither the atricle nor the other comments in this thread really touch on that.
Sure. I almost never feel any jealousy even as my partners are spending lots of time and doing lots of things with other people. In fact I usually feel good that they are having a good time....
Exemplary
Sure. I almost never feel any jealousy even as my partners are spending lots of time and doing lots of things with other people. In fact I usually feel good that they are having a good time. That’s called compersion and I feel it a lot.
As a thought experiment: do you feel jealous when your friend hangs out with another friend and has a good time? Well under some circumstances we can feel jealous there, but it’s also pretty normal to feel happy for our friends. We get time with our friends when we can, but they have lives and other friends. That’s normal. With poly, for me, I feel the same way about my partners. They spend time with me when we can, but they have other partners and to me that’s normal. The one occasion I feel jealous is when someone I really want to spend time with doesn’t want to spend time with me (like not even plan time in the future), but does want to spend time with someone else. Then I get jealous because I can’t have something someone else is having. But if the person wants to see me at some point then I don’t really feel jealous if they’re doing something else at other times.
I have never been a jealous person. Back in the day I let my girlfriend and best friend hook up and I was just happy for them. I’ve always been interested in lots of people. So since I want to be free to mingle with multiple people and I don’t really care if my partners do so with others, it made rational sense for me to embrace poly, learn how to cope with any weird feelings that might come up, and eventually just let go of any of the potential feelings of conflict that might come up when someone you love is with someone else.
You have to realize that in monogamy, you’ve explicitly made a promise not to be sexual or intimate with other people. So if a partner violates that, they’ve betrayed your trust. But in poly you simply don’t make that promise, and then if a partner has sex with someone else no trust has been violated. It’s just fine. You likely go in to the relationship expecting that. And you’re allowed to not participate. But if you choose to participate then you’re accepting what will come. So when it happens, there’s really nothing to it.
I can still feel sad if someone I like doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. But if me and them have a good relationship and we get together sometimes and kiss and cuddle and sleep together, that’s fantastic! What they do when we’re not together has no effect on me aside from safer sex concerns.
Easy solution - cuddle with everyone! I either have an extremely low propensity to jealousy or simply don't feel it in the same way as others. A partner going to do something that makes them happy...
Watching your partner go upstairs to cuddle somone else and not feeling sad about it? Not easy.
Easy solution - cuddle with everyone!
I am interested, if you don't mind sharing, if and/or how jealousy plays a role in those relationships. So far neither the atricle nor the other comments in this thread really touch on that.
I either have an extremely low propensity to jealousy or simply don't feel it in the same way as others. A partner going to do something that makes them happy will make me happy and is something I actively encourage my partners to do.
Jumping in for a minute: if it's useful, here's a poly perspective on jealousy that I mostly agree with, from the book More Than Two: When I've experienced jealousy, looking at it in this way has...
Jumping in for a minute: if it's useful, here's a poly perspective on jealousy that I mostly agree with, from the book More Than Two:
Almost always, jealousy is rooted in some sort of fear: of abandonment, of being replaced, of losing the attention of someone you love, of being alone. Jealousy isn't really about the person you feel jealous of. It's about you: your feeling that you might lose something precious.
It's so easy to pin responsibility for our emotions on other people. "You're making me feel this terrible thing. Stop doing that!" We forget that our emotions might be the result of our own insecurities rather than our partners' actions. When we transfer responsibility for our emotions to others, we yield control over our own lives.
When I've experienced jealousy, looking at it in this way has helped me figure out what to do about it. It's been a process, but worth it, because now I'm much more sure of my own worth.
I think the prevailing take on jealousy in this thread is pretty off the mark at least with respect to monogamous relationships. People keep talking about jealousy as some negative aspect of...
I think the prevailing take on jealousy in this thread is pretty off the mark at least with respect to monogamous relationships. People keep talking about jealousy as some negative aspect of relationships that need to be solved. I don't feel that way at all. I've been with my wife for ten years, and if some other guy tries to flirt with her, I get jealous. I like that I get jealous. My wife likes that I get jealous also. It's a subconscious reminder of how much I care about her. I'm not in any way afraid of losing her, and vise versa when she gets jealous about female attention towards me.
I view it as a normal, healthy part of a committed relationship; not some horrible thing that needs to be solved by polyamory. The idea of that horrifies the both of us, and it's not because of some weird external cultural programming, like many people keep suggesting.
Sounds exhausting. Polyamory probably couldn't work for me. I could imagine something like friends with benefits, where there's little contact except for occasional booty calls, if my partner's...
Sounds exhausting. Polyamory probably couldn't work for me. I could imagine something like friends with benefits, where there's little contact except for occasional booty calls, if my partner's other partner was okay with it, but I've never tried it before, so I don't know how I would ultimately feel about it. Considering how older hippie communes where "everyone loved everyone" usually fell apart due to jealousy, I can't imagine that polyamory would work for the majority of the population, but if some people arrange themselves and are happy with it, more power to them.
Polyamory is super common in the right places and can work really well for some people, with the right expectations. I imagine there were a whole lot of reasons hippie communes fell apart, and I...
Polyamory is super common in the right places and can work really well for some people, with the right expectations. I imagine there were a whole lot of reasons hippie communes fell apart, and I doubt it was “usually” due primarily to relationship jealousy. But where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area it’s really easy to find poly people, and it’s working extremely well for me. I never liked monogamy. Lots of people do! But not everyone.
The anecdotal consensus I get from this thread and others on Tildes about the subject is that people previously were pretty toxic, possessive and jealous and that polyamory was a way to unlearn...
The anecdotal consensus I get from this thread and others on Tildes about the subject is that people previously were pretty toxic, possessive and jealous and that polyamory was a way to unlearn those behaviours. I'd be interested if someone went from mono to poly and back to mono if those feelings and behaviours manifested again.
You're right though, attributing hippie communes fell apart solely to their polyamorous lifestyle is most likely wrong.
I just love getting to know someone very intimitately, knowing what she loves and likes, anticipating desires and fulfilling them, and receiving back the same. It's one of the best feelings when someone you care about deeply does something unexpected, that goes from getting that cocoa water you love on her way back home from work or doing chores at home you don't mind doing, but she hates.
Doing this with multiple people sounds, as I said, exhausting.
Thanks for your input, and I'm sorry someone cheated on you. :( But it's good to see that you learned from those past experiences, and yes, communication is always the most important in...
Thanks for your input, and I'm sorry someone cheated on you. :(
But it's good to see that you learned from those past experiences, and yes, communication is always the most important in relationships, especially talking about difficult subjects (though I wouldn't attribute that knowledge solely to polyamorous relationships, but knowledge can come from many different places).
The most important thing is that everyone is happy that way (which tbh, the person in the interview doesn't seem as much) and that options are out there.
I love getting to know someone deeply too! But when I was in monogamous relationships a problem would happen that eventually I’d meet another fantastic person that liked me too, and it felt like...
I love getting to know someone deeply too! But when I was in monogamous relationships a problem would happen that eventually I’d meet another fantastic person that liked me too, and it felt like torture that I couldn’t pursue them. Now with poly that’s not a problem! I rarely feel exhausted because I only date new people when I’m feeling extra capacity. And then it’s great to have someone I know deeply that I can spend time with, but still meet new people, be close with them, and enjoy all life has to offer.
But it might not be for you! And that’s totally okay. :)
Yeah for sure. This thread got touchy for me because another user called poly “fucking weird”. I can’t tell you how much better my life would have been if people told me when I was young that I...
Yeah for sure. This thread got touchy for me because another user called poly “fucking weird”. I can’t tell you how much better my life would have been if people told me when I was young that I didn’t have to only date one person at a time. It’s definitely not for everyone but it is good for me!
That's really interesting, although I find it kinda strange that the dudes didn't already know eachother from the start. I personally would feel uneasy ('it's not "the guy she tells you not to...
That's really interesting, although I find it kinda strange that the dudes didn't already know eachother from the start. I personally would feel uneasy ('it's not "the guy she tells you not to worry about", you will be ok') if I didn't know them already. Thankfully they seem to be sorting that out. Also what happens if not all of them can live under the same roof without some weird improvisation?
Honestly I think they'd prefer it? Reading through the lines of the interview, at least the guy giving the answers seems to not be that interested in getting to know the other boyfriend. It seems...
Also what happens if not all of them can live under the same roof without some weird improvisation?
Honestly I think they'd prefer it? Reading through the lines of the interview, at least the guy giving the answers seems to not be that interested in getting to know the other boyfriend. It seems to be more of a "I like her enough to tolerate it" situation whereby the girl is the main instigator of the poly relationship maybe cause she's high energy, likes the attention, whatever.
What could possibly go wrong...?
Honestly, for the few people I know who went through a "polyamorous" phase, it broke down at some point because it's
plain fucking weirdso easy to get awkward (sorry, "weird" sounded so dismissive, I'm just talking about personally having seen it go badly for painfully obvious reasons). Like, everyone can live life however they want and clearly there's people who want to try this but there's also a reason why people, when having the choice, tend to go for monogamous relationships.This also doesn't pair well with what I heard about the psychological impact of the lockdowns. I don't think it applies here, but they're saying the number of domestic abuse cases are rising. Being this close with someone for weeks and not having planned for it at all is just a recipe for interpersonal disaster. I'm in a very harmonious relationship but even I am noticing an uptick of lash-outs.
The same way why people, when having the choice, tend to go for heterosexual relationships? 😅
I think it's unfair to compare this to a choice. This is just how some of us are wired.
This is how I feel about monogamous relationships. I have absolutely zero qualms about going to spend time with my partner in oakland, who lives with someone who is the girlfriend of another one of my partners. Frequently all 4 of us are there together and it's extremely natural to me.
Agreed. I think like most human behavior, it's a combination of nature and nurture. I like to think of it as biology placing some outer limits on possible behavior and then interactions with the world helping to set where you actually sit. Over time it may shift around as those interactions differ.
Same. We’ve got six poly people in our house for lockdown. It’s great! Last night me and my partner and her husband and her other partner and another roommate watched Picard together. :)
With all due respect, fuck you, lol. It's clearly a cultural thing. That's like implying I'm a homophobe for criticizing clerical celibacy.
If you accept people as being flawed, all these flaws tend to bring up the complications that monogamy solves. I apologize for the "fucking weird" part and there must be people for whom polyamorous relationships work, but reading that interview makes it so clear he's uncomfortable with the situation and it doesn't seem sustainable.
😂 just pointing out it's a silly way of looking at it, it's definitely a questionable analogy
Well, I'm not denying that. I also have to apologize, I'm using my gossip voice to talk on a website visited by thousands of people I don't know. Basically, I have a specific friend who I saw getting burned by this and it kinda annoys me on a personal level to see people not emotionally equipped for it jump into it as almost a dare with the universe. I just want people to be happy. If a polyamorous relationship makes everyone involved happy, that's fucking perfect, I'm not here to put every person on earth in a box. I'm just saying it's hard and people underestimating the emotional effort can get horribly burned.
Yay! Me too 💜💜
Oh absolutely. They are typically more work, in my experience, than non-poly relationships and as you've stated:
this is not a good mindset. One of my partners basically has all of their other partners doing this to some level or another. They are simply not mature enough for a proper poly relationship or are not treating their partners very equitably.
This is really unnecessarily judgey. I'm not poly myself but there are certainly a lot weirder things in life. You could use "people tend to do x" for any number of things, including straight relationships.
Hah. Okay this is so one sided it is funny to me. I’m currently on lockdown with my recent ex partner and her new partner. We’re poly. Upstairs there’s also a partner of mine, her husband, and one of her partners. Also a cat.
I never liked monogamy. Lots of people, as you say “tend to go for monogamous relationships”. But of course they do! That’s all I ever learned about. People like you said anything else was “plain fucking weird”.
Well I’ve read the books on polyamory. The foundational text The Ethical Slut, and newer more balanced books like More Than Two. Actually polyamory is not weird. People having multiple relationships of many different flavors throughout history is an extremely normal human thing. It only seems weird because many cultures have pretended like monogamy is all there is.
I am MUCH happier with polyamory. I’ve been in regular therapy for years, and he encouraged me to read the books, to start telling my monogamous partners I wanted to be poly, and when those relationships inevitably ended to finally only seek out other poly people. It has been several years since my last “monogamous but i don’t want to lose you so I’ll try poly even if it’s painful” relationship. Now it’s only people who themselves want to be poly.
It’s one of the best things things to ever happen to me. To discover this. The speed, the flow, the pace. It’s all right for me. Years ago with a monogamous break up, it basically immediately ended any connection she and I had. After years together, I was devastated. With my most recent break up, with a relationship of similar duration, the pain is dramatically lower. Even though she has a new partner, she can spend time with me without threatening her other relationship. I’m working on letting go, but it’s nice that we can still see each other and even still cuddle! Honestly monogamous break ups where all of a sudden you stop spending any time with your friend of years because your new partner feels threatened - that seems so unhealthy to me.
You don’t have to like poly. You be and do what feels right for you! But please understand, there are many of us out here that find monogamy weird. It’s a personal preference, not an objective fact, whether poly is weird or normal.
I feel like this conversation is headed towards a discussion about human psychology that very few of us are qualified for. I'm not op, but in defense of the 'weird' comment, I don't think it was intended to be deragatory. 'Weird' and 'perfectly acceptable' are not mutually exclusive. I had a beer the other night that tasted like a jalapeno popper and it was fucking weird. Delicious, but weird.
I'm glad this thread started, because I haven't met anyone that's poly relationship, so it's interesting to see different perspectives. I'm not sure these answers really clarify some of (for lack of a better term) the 'weirdness' though. The thing that makes polyamory 'weird' for a lot of people is how it seems to contradict everything non-poly people understand about things like jealousy and envy in the context of an intimate relationship. It probably has more to do with jealousy than the idea of having feelings for more than one person. Most people have probably experienced the latter, but can't comprehend the former. Wanting to cuddle with more than one person? Easy. Watching your partner go upstairs to cuddle somone else and not feeling sad about it? Not easy.
Clearly it works for some people (good for you, you fucking zen masters 😉), but for others it is so far out of the ordinary that it's difficult to put into words, hence the 'weird' comment. I'm not sure how much of this is learned from living in a society that has made monogamy the standard for many generations. Jealousy seems to appear at an early age and not just in the context of intimate relationships; but like I said, I'm not sure if there are a lot of people that can answer that question. I am interested, if you don't mind sharing, if and/or how jealousy plays a role in those relationships. So far neither the atricle nor the other comments in this thread really touch on that.
Sure. I almost never feel any jealousy even as my partners are spending lots of time and doing lots of things with other people. In fact I usually feel good that they are having a good time. That’s called compersion and I feel it a lot.
As a thought experiment: do you feel jealous when your friend hangs out with another friend and has a good time? Well under some circumstances we can feel jealous there, but it’s also pretty normal to feel happy for our friends. We get time with our friends when we can, but they have lives and other friends. That’s normal. With poly, for me, I feel the same way about my partners. They spend time with me when we can, but they have other partners and to me that’s normal. The one occasion I feel jealous is when someone I really want to spend time with doesn’t want to spend time with me (like not even plan time in the future), but does want to spend time with someone else. Then I get jealous because I can’t have something someone else is having. But if the person wants to see me at some point then I don’t really feel jealous if they’re doing something else at other times.
I have never been a jealous person. Back in the day I let my girlfriend and best friend hook up and I was just happy for them. I’ve always been interested in lots of people. So since I want to be free to mingle with multiple people and I don’t really care if my partners do so with others, it made rational sense for me to embrace poly, learn how to cope with any weird feelings that might come up, and eventually just let go of any of the potential feelings of conflict that might come up when someone you love is with someone else.
You have to realize that in monogamy, you’ve explicitly made a promise not to be sexual or intimate with other people. So if a partner violates that, they’ve betrayed your trust. But in poly you simply don’t make that promise, and then if a partner has sex with someone else no trust has been violated. It’s just fine. You likely go in to the relationship expecting that. And you’re allowed to not participate. But if you choose to participate then you’re accepting what will come. So when it happens, there’s really nothing to it.
I can still feel sad if someone I like doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. But if me and them have a good relationship and we get together sometimes and kiss and cuddle and sleep together, that’s fantastic! What they do when we’re not together has no effect on me aside from safer sex concerns.
Easy solution - cuddle with everyone!
I either have an extremely low propensity to jealousy or simply don't feel it in the same way as others. A partner going to do something that makes them happy will make me happy and is something I actively encourage my partners to do.
This is called compersion and yeah it rocks! (as I'm sure you know, but I really like naming concepts for easier thinking.)
Yay words! Thanks, I think I've heard the word before, but it's something I'll definitely start incorporating into my vocabulary.
Jumping in for a minute: if it's useful, here's a poly perspective on jealousy that I mostly agree with, from the book More Than Two:
When I've experienced jealousy, looking at it in this way has helped me figure out what to do about it. It's been a process, but worth it, because now I'm much more sure of my own worth.
I think the prevailing take on jealousy in this thread is pretty off the mark at least with respect to monogamous relationships. People keep talking about jealousy as some negative aspect of relationships that need to be solved. I don't feel that way at all. I've been with my wife for ten years, and if some other guy tries to flirt with her, I get jealous. I like that I get jealous. My wife likes that I get jealous also. It's a subconscious reminder of how much I care about her. I'm not in any way afraid of losing her, and vise versa when she gets jealous about female attention towards me.
I view it as a normal, healthy part of a committed relationship; not some horrible thing that needs to be solved by polyamory. The idea of that horrifies the both of us, and it's not because of some weird external cultural programming, like many people keep suggesting.
Sounds exhausting. Polyamory probably couldn't work for me. I could imagine something like friends with benefits, where there's little contact except for occasional booty calls, if my partner's other partner was okay with it, but I've never tried it before, so I don't know how I would ultimately feel about it. Considering how older hippie communes where "everyone loved everyone" usually fell apart due to jealousy, I can't imagine that polyamory would work for the majority of the population, but if some people arrange themselves and are happy with it, more power to them.
Polyamory is super common in the right places and can work really well for some people, with the right expectations. I imagine there were a whole lot of reasons hippie communes fell apart, and I doubt it was “usually” due primarily to relationship jealousy. But where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area it’s really easy to find poly people, and it’s working extremely well for me. I never liked monogamy. Lots of people do! But not everyone.
The anecdotal consensus I get from this thread and others on Tildes about the subject is that people previously were pretty toxic, possessive and jealous and that polyamory was a way to unlearn those behaviours. I'd be interested if someone went from mono to poly and back to mono if those feelings and behaviours manifested again.
You're right though, attributing hippie communes fell apart solely to their polyamorous lifestyle is most likely wrong.
I just love getting to know someone very intimitately, knowing what she loves and likes, anticipating desires and fulfilling them, and receiving back the same. It's one of the best feelings when someone you care about deeply does something unexpected, that goes from getting that cocoa water you love on her way back home from work or doing chores at home you don't mind doing, but she hates.
Doing this with multiple people sounds, as I said, exhausting.
Thanks for your input, and I'm sorry someone cheated on you. :(
But it's good to see that you learned from those past experiences, and yes, communication is always the most important in relationships, especially talking about difficult subjects (though I wouldn't attribute that knowledge solely to polyamorous relationships, but knowledge can come from many different places).
The most important thing is that everyone is happy that way (which tbh, the person in the interview doesn't seem as much) and that options are out there.
I love getting to know someone deeply too! But when I was in monogamous relationships a problem would happen that eventually I’d meet another fantastic person that liked me too, and it felt like torture that I couldn’t pursue them. Now with poly that’s not a problem! I rarely feel exhausted because I only date new people when I’m feeling extra capacity. And then it’s great to have someone I know deeply that I can spend time with, but still meet new people, be close with them, and enjoy all life has to offer.
But it might not be for you! And that’s totally okay. :)
As long as we're all happy mate, all's well with me. :)
Yeah for sure. This thread got touchy for me because another user called poly “fucking weird”. I can’t tell you how much better my life would have been if people told me when I was young that I didn’t have to only date one person at a time. It’s definitely not for everyone but it is good for me!
If all parties get along this can be wonderful (I'm poly)
I have no moral concerns regarding this kind of arrangement. I just think the logistics are exceedingly complicated.
That's really interesting, although I find it kinda strange that the dudes didn't already know eachother from the start. I personally would feel uneasy ('it's not "the guy she tells you not to worry about", you will be ok') if I didn't know them already. Thankfully they seem to be sorting that out. Also what happens if not all of them can live under the same roof without some weird improvisation?
Honestly I think they'd prefer it? Reading through the lines of the interview, at least the guy giving the answers seems to not be that interested in getting to know the other boyfriend. It seems to be more of a "I like her enough to tolerate it" situation whereby the girl is the main instigator of the poly relationship maybe cause she's high energy, likes the attention, whatever.
Huh. In that case that guy just isn't like me. I'd feel like a third wheel in that situation regardless of being poly or not.