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Polyamory: Someone Please Help Me Understand

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Derek281
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11 Sep 2015, 1:41 am

A Polyamory type relationship may exist with practicing swingers or couples where one partner is in a sugar dating relationship. A guy I know is in a sugar dating relationship with a married woman. He is divorced and meets this woman once a week and gives her shopping money. Her husband is unknowingly sharing her with another man. She enjoys the meetings very much and bc of his problems with the dating game he has a steady sexual partner. He is about 20+ years older than the woman he is seeing, well off, and views this type of dating as a sexual preference as he does not want a committed relationship. He has been seeing the woman since she was engaged to her third husband and during her marriage. She told him her marriage would not affect their meetings. He says having a young married woman as his mistress turns him on.

Maintaining a relationship is tough enough without bringing in extra partners. Extra partners increases the risks related with sex (STD, Pregnancy) and also expenses (where a man is seeing multiple women). In dating a woman I would not want to aggravate things by expressing something about how I would want to be with other women. I believe this is disrespectful to express such a thing and the woman I am in a relationship with I would want for my one and only.



nurseangela
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11 Sep 2015, 5:08 pm

Derek281 wrote:
A Polyamory type relationship may exist with practicing swingers or couples where one partner is in a sugar dating relationship. A guy I know is in a sugar dating relationship with a married woman. He is divorced and meets this woman once a week and gives her shopping money. Her husband is unknowingly sharing her with another man. She enjoys the meetings very much and bc of his problems with the dating game he has a steady sexual partner. He is about 20+ years older than the woman he is seeing, well off, and views this type of dating as a sexual preference as he does not want a committed relationship. He has been seeing the woman since she was engaged to her third husband and during her marriage. She told him her marriage would not affect their meetings. He says having a young married woman as his mistress turns him on.

Maintaining a relationship is tough enough without bringing in extra partners. Extra partners increases the risks related with sex (STD, Pregnancy) and also expenses (where a man is seeing multiple women). In dating a woman I would not want to aggravate things by expressing something about how I would want to be with other women. I believe this is disrespectful to express such a thing and the woman I am in a relationship with I would want for my one and only.


So this "sugar dating" is another way of saying one is having an affair with a married person without the married person's other half knowing about it? I call it cheating. People need to call things how they are instead of "sugar coating" it (no pun intended). No wonder the woman is in her third marriage. She gives women a bad name and I feel sorry for her husband.


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Phemto
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14 Sep 2015, 9:54 am

nurseangela wrote:

So this "sugar dating" is another way of saying one is having an affair with a married person without the married person's other half knowing about it? I call it cheating. People need to call things how they are instead of "sugar coating" it (no pun intended). No wonder the woman is in her third marriage. She gives women a bad name and I feel sorry for her husband.


Most members of the poly community would call this cheating too, and would NOT call it poly. Poly is not about sex outside of marriage. It's about everybody knowing what's going on, and everybody talking and talking and taaallllkiiiinnnggg about how they feel about it until some understanding is reached.

If you're spouse doesn't know what you're doing, it's not poly.



MisterSpock
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14 Sep 2015, 2:50 pm

@nurseangela This is the way I see it (and I am a heterosexual male)...

Can you love both of you parents at the same time? If you have two children, can you love them both at the same time? Over your lifetime can you romantically love more than one person? I understand polyamory as being able to romantically love two people at the same time, which I don't see as a bad thing.

However, extra-relational activities which are unknown by one party, or with done without consent of that party is definitely breaking a trust barrier, which most people would describe as cheating or having an affair.

Polyamory does not mean polysexuality, nor does it mean swinging.


Personally, I prefer monogamy, but see no issue with real polyamory (i.e. not motivated by wealth or other factors).



dianthus
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14 Sep 2015, 4:27 pm

nurseangela wrote:
So this "sugar dating" is another way of saying one is having an affair with a married person without the married person's other half knowing about it? I call it cheating. People need to call things how they are instead of "sugar coating" it (no pun intended). No wonder the woman is in her third marriage. She gives women a bad name and I feel sorry for her husband.


"Sugar dating" means he's her sugar daddy (older and gives her money). I feel bad for her husband too, sounds like she's a female gigolo.

People use the term polyamory to mean different things, but none of them sound good to me. I've known people who were into polyamory, swinging, open relationships, and just plain cheating, and I didn't want to judge, but all of them used a totally different moral compass than I do. I tried to understand it, but I couldn't relate to them at all. I came to the conclusion that it's not my place to understand it, they can go their way and I go mine.



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14 Sep 2015, 4:32 pm

Phemto wrote:
Most members of the poly community would call this cheating too, and would NOT call it poly. Poly is not about sex outside of marriage. It's about everybody knowing what's going on, and everybody talking and talking and taaallllkiiiinnnggg about how they feel about it until some understanding is reached.

If you're spouse doesn't know what you're doing, it's not poly.


I don't agree with their terminology. It is too NT-fixated and ill adapted to already established (monogamous) relationships. Dating and talking early in a relationship are NT preferences, and not all NDs find them useful. If you get a crush on somebody that you never talked to you are not likely to use a lot of talking and explaining about polyamory, neither to your partner nor to your crush. At that point you simply have no idea if it will lead anywhere or not. Also, some NDs can have almost purely imaginary relationships, and how on earth would you talk about these and with whom?

So I would prefer if polyamory was defined based on the ABILITY of somebody to love more than one person, and then all the talking seems totally misplaced. At least for asexual polyamory there is no need for any talking IMHO.



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15 Sep 2015, 3:10 pm

rdos wrote:
Phemto wrote:

I don't agree with their terminology. It is too NT-fixated and ill adapted to already established (monogamous) relationships. Dating and talking early in a relationship are NT preferences, and not all NDs find them useful. If you get a crush on somebody that you never talked to you are not likely to use a lot of talking and explaining about polyamory, neither to your partner nor to your crush. At that point you simply have no idea if it will lead anywhere or not. Also, some NDs can have almost purely imaginary relationships, and how on earth would you talk about these and with whom?

So I would prefer if polyamory was defined based on the ABILITY of somebody to love more than one person, and then all the talking seems totally misplaced. At least for asexual polyamory there is no need for any talking IMHO.


Sorry. I think I created some confusion. I didn't mean to say that the talking is part of the definition. I think you definition pretty much nails it at it's most basic. The talking part is what falls what often falls out of the fact that everyone is supposed to know what's going on, and be able to express their concerns. The point I wanted to make was the if you have an example of "I know this woman who's going behind her husband's back...." Don't call it poly. It's cheating. Ask a poly person and most will call it cheating.

I'd argue with the statement that it's NT-fixated. The ideal of a healthy poly relationship that you hear from the experts like Cunning Minx and Janet Hardy is actually very ND friendly. For an aspie, the best part is the idea that if there is something bothering you, you're supposed to USE YOUR WORDS, and not fall back on the NT things like comments with double meaning, body language, and the bizarre eyebrow semaphore they're always using. It levels the playing field considerably. That probably explains why the statistics say that polyamory is more popular among aspies than the general NT population.



rdos
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15 Sep 2015, 4:31 pm

Phemto wrote:
I'd argue with the statement that it's NT-fixated. The ideal of a healthy poly relationship that you hear from the experts like Cunning Minx and Janet Hardy is actually very ND friendly. For an aspie, the best part is the idea that if there is something bothering you, you're supposed to USE YOUR WORDS, and not fall back on the NT things like comments with double meaning, body language, and the bizarre eyebrow semaphore they're always using. It levels the playing field considerably.


That would be true if dating and talking wasn't NT-preferences for forming relationships. Those things creates huge problems for NDs. Either they attach too qucikly and too much or they fail to attach, neither which results in a healthy relationship.

Phemto wrote:
That probably explains why the statistics say that polyamory is more popular among aspies than the general NT population.


Uhm, no. Polyamory is more common in NDs despite that it is supposed to be achieved with dating and talking. If we dropped those it would be much more common in NDs. After all, it is a trait that is linked to ND relationship traits but with too low occurrence compared to other traits.



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15 Sep 2015, 4:45 pm

rdos wrote:
Phemto wrote:
I'd argue with the statement that it's NT-fixated. The ideal of a healthy poly relationship that you hear from the experts like Cunning Minx and Janet Hardy is actually very ND friendly. For an aspie, the best part is the idea that if there is something bothering you, you're supposed to USE YOUR WORDS, and not fall back on the NT things like comments with double meaning, body language, and the bizarre eyebrow semaphore they're always using. It levels the playing field considerably.


That would be true if dating and talking wasn't NT-preferences for forming relationships. Those things creates huge problems for NDs. Either they attach too qucikly and too much or they fail to attach, neither which results in a healthy relationship.

Phemto wrote:
That probably explains why the statistics say that polyamory is more popular among aspies than the general NT population.


Uhm, no. Polyamory is more common in NDs despite that it is supposed to be achieved with dating and talking. If we dropped those it would be much more common in NDs. After all, it is a trait that is linked to ND relationship traits but with too low occurrence compared to other traits.


Maybe we're confusing "talking" with communicating. I also may have implied a high quantity to the communication when its' really quality that matters. You're right that NT's seem be into VERY large quantities of pretty low quality talk. That's not what I'm "talking" about here.

Personally I often find text messages a far more effective way of getting my point across. I guess my original point was that if you're partner is doing something that's bothers you, it's up to you (whether NT or ND) to let them know about it by whatever signalling system works for you. If you don't and it continues, who's fault is that?



kaedatiger
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27 Aug 2017, 5:36 pm

People have different approaches to romantic and sexual relationships. For me personally, monogamy doesn't make any sense. Humans are very different from each other and have different needs: socially, romantically, sexually, hobbies/ activities, etc. Expecting ONE person to match you on EVERYTHING is unrealistic. So either you choose to have one partner, and fulfill 80% of each other's needs, or you form connections with more that one person who give you what you need in different ways.

I've tried both monogamous and polyamorous relationships. The monogamous ones were terrible for me. Having someone paranoid about me cheating on them or getting jealous when I go out with friends, trying to control/ change me into their idea of the perfect lover, putting WAY TOO MUCH emphasis on the sexual aspect of the relationship, and other toxic alienating behaviors were too much for me to deal with. I have enough problems of my own without being held responsible for someone else's (usually unfounded) insecurities. And many of them originally pursued me because of loneliness rather than compatibility, so I was stuck bound to one person with whom I couldn't achieve emotional intimacy because of all the miscommunication, mismatched expectations, and trust issues, including my own inability to trust people who don't exhibit trusting behavior. If my only two choices were monogamy or singlehood, being single is clearly the better option for me.

On the other hand, negotiating polyamorous partnerships and the occasional sexual friendship has been liberating. I can keep my own autonomy (very important!), my polyamorous partners don't lie about what they do to "protect my feelings" (a rationalization for being sneaky, a common 'monogamous' behavior that I absolutely can't stand), and as a bonus I generally get along and have common interests with my partners' other partners.

Obviously, not everyone is interested in or would benefit from dating multiple partners. But in the same way, not everyone wants to be tied to only one romantic or sexual relationship. Poly takes the effort of fully open communication, social and organizational skills, and a mindset that views co-lovers as part of the tribe. It's not for people who are driven more towards competition than cooperation.