Open Marriage

Post Reply New Topic

It is not for you to decide how stable a child's life is simply because their parents are in a poly relationship.

And no, this isn't all about 'needs not being met'. Plenty of poly people can adopt a monogamous life and be perfectly happy.

open marrage sux dont do it

You already said that once. You're really not contributing anything to this discussion.

I give up. Your reading comprehension problems are beyond me. You're responding to invisible text.

I take issue with this. Look, having an non-monogamous relationship is cool and shaming people for the way they like to have sex (as long as it's not physically dangerous to the participants and between consenting adults) is never OK. But she committed to a monogamous relationship and then broke that commitment without even discussing it with her husband. No matter what your stance on polyamory, that is a dick move 9 ways to Sunday.

OP, I feel your pain. The girl I lost my virginity to in college (and the second girl I ever even kissed at 20 years old) pretty much railroaded me into a an open relationship against my wishes - I wanted to keep dating her and I was so worked up about losing my V-card and actually, finally having SEX with a GIRL that I was a total doormat and accepted the idea of her seeing other guys. Of course, she did all the dating around and my mopey ass was stuck trailing her like a puppy dog while she did things like turning me away at her door because the guy she REALLY wanted to have sex with was there. It was not healthy for my (already low) relationship self esteem or my views of relationships, and it took me 2 years and finally hooking up with someone else before I got over it. I can't imagine having this situation unfold with the mother of your children.

Well in my experience, people just do like some others I know at the moment do and cheat constantly on his wife of under two months while he has a baby that is under one month old.

You say you're for sorting it out before kids happen, but that's the problem, sometimes it never sorts itself out.

Note: I do not like the guy in question at all or what he did. I merely think all of it was avoidable.

I'm told that 75% of married men and 52% of married women cheat at some point.

It doesn't sort itself out most of the time because the people in question are trying to hide from themselves, and they're willing to use other people as human shields. Which sucks. It's really pretty simple: if you don't know yourself, and/or you have no obvious way to support children, don't make babies. If you don't know yourself, and babies aren't what you're after, then at least refrain from making commitments to other people, because you've got your fingers crossed behind your back, and that sucks too. You see the same thing with people who discover they're gay, or transgender, or whatever, nine years and three kids into a marriage. At which point they go to a therapist for absolution and feel-good talk about how they're being true to themselves and it's regrettable and necessary how they're screwing over these other people, some of whom are children they helped make. (Kids don't "happen". Adults, nominal or otherwise, make them, almost always in the usual way, which generally involves volition.)

I don't think people should screw over other people so they can be "true to themselves" on a dime, but discovering you're gay when all you ever wanted to do and thought you could do was to have a happy relationship with a woman and a family is something that *could* happen, and if it did happen you'd have to leave. People in general do not know themselves all that well and are subject to mistakes.

That doesn't make it right.

Beware the stats.

It's a strong argument that the rigid construct of monogamy is flawed. The fallout being, high rates of cheating. Regardless of how anyone feels about it morally or with respect to one case.

This makes me kind of sad. The first thing I think of whenever I hear statistics like that, though, is that argument opponents of gay marriage make about how it's somehow a threat to the sanctity of 'traditional' marriage. No, married people are a threat to the sanctity of marriage.

And that doesn't mean I'd be okay with it if my spouse cheated. Or that it gives an excuse to cheat.

Depressing statistics....

I highly doubt that "75%" statistic, particularly without seeing a source. The most trustworthy source I've seen says that 10% of married people will cheat at some point, but even that is not considered to be a reliable number.

To the topic, once you agree to marriage, you commit yourself to monogamy. The only exception is if the two of you agreed to other arrangements prior to tying the knot. To say that you want an open marriage after the fact is to not only go back on your word, but to break a solemn vow.

10% cannot possibly be accurate. Most married guys, given the opportunity to have sex with, say, a supermodel, with relative safety from their spouse finding out, would do it. I think the number who would do it is at least 75%. They would not do it if they thought their spouse might find out, but they would do it if they were certain it wouldn't be heard of or talked about ever again. And it's probably only tenuously connected to how much they love their spouse. After all, if their spouse isn't going to hear about it, they're not hurting them, which is probably for most guys almost as strong an incentive not to cheat as the actual getting caught and divorced part. I think most guys love their wives. 10% might be a figure for the number of people who get caught, but even that seems too low.

Women are more likely to obey a moral code in the absence of the likelihood of getting caught, and tend to cheat for different reasons than men do. Guys are practical about it and just want to bang someone different from the person they've been banging. Guys probably cheat more often with women inferior to their spouse than women who are superior.

A quick Google search gives me statistics all over the map but none as low as 10%. The outlier at the top end is Sherry Hite, with 70% and 72% for women and men respectively. My 75% was wrong, Fox News Magazine claims 70%, but I don't know. They're Fox.

I understand the percentages have risen dramatically in the past 20 years, probably because of the Internet. People who are stuck home in domestic lives are suddenly actually meeting new people. People who they have something in common with, and who probably share no mutual friends with the spouse.