I personally am in a phenomenally stable polyamorous relationship. I’ve been married to my wife for 12 years, and she has had the same boyfriend for about half of that time. It’s a really fulfilling arrangement for all of us in various ways. We’re all genuinely happy and satisfied. I’m kind of casually looking for a boyfriend of my own.
But I feel like I only hear negative stories about other poly experiences. It’s always unstable people and situations. It’s always two out of three people happy at most. Surely there are other success stories out there, and I just hear the disasters because they’re more memorable and fun to tell. Does anyone else have or know a polyamory success story?
EDIT: This blew up a little while I was asleep. I promise I’m at least reading every comment.
EDIT 2.0: ngl I did not expect the trope of polyamory to fix a struggling relationship would be so real. We did just the opposite and are both baffled. Don’t use volitility to fight the volitility.
My housemates are poly and pretty happy about it.
It’s a bit of a logic puzzle:
- I live in a house with A, B, and C.
- A and B are married.
- B is also dating J, who lives in a big complicated house with lots of people, including their partner K.
- Separately, C is dating X.
- X is married to Y; X is also dating Z.
- I don’t know Y or K well enough to know if they have other partners, but I suspect so.
- No, I am not dating anyone on this list.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no current polycule link between AB and C; nor between any of them and me.
Everyone in this list is in their 30s or 40s, and almost all are some flavor of queer; at least two are also trans. There are no kids in the picture, although we know other poly people in the neighborhood who do have kids.
It’s all quite cheerful and civilized. Compersion is totally a thing. Also, fortunately people’s food preferences aren’t complicated when everyone’s over for dinner. If anybody starts dating someone who doesn’t like mushrooms, that’s gonna be a problem.
Dammit I don’t care what you get up to with who, I just want to know how many people I’m cooking for.
I’ll tell you what. When I was young, the idea of (ethically) dating more than one person seemed interesting and exciting.
I’m 40, and just reading about X’s part in this had me recoiling in horror at the amount of work it would be to be married and dating two other people. I hope they’re unemployed or part time, because those relationships sound like a full-time job.
It sounds like it. But in practice? Not really?
As that’s assuming every partner gets the same amount of attention as in a mono relationship, but your partner(s) has other partners, they can hang out with someone else when you are busy or need some time for yourself. How much time you spend with your partner(s) is very flexible.
In fact, in my polycule, people tend to actually get more alone time, because you are not the sole person fulfilling your partner’s romantic needs. It’s remarkably flexible, and, while it may need some planning and/or making sure you tend to your relationships, in my case it feels remarkably straightforward and freeing.
It’s a thing I like a lot, actually. Not feeling like I am the sole person responsible for someone’s romantic needs. It lifts a fair amount of stress off of me.
This flexibility means you can tune a lot of things, into what works for everyone.
I should really think more about compersion. It’s an idea that I think and talk about frequently, but it’s a term my brain hasn’t yet held for the long term. But I have huge amounts of compersion. I get so excited when good things happen to the people I care about. Our polyamory thrives on how happy it makes me to see my wife in that happy, lovey way with someone. I am just as delighted that my best friend was recently promoted to AM as I am that I was promoted to key lead with her. Compersion is a big part of my life that I should give more space and respect to express itself.
It took me until this deep in the thread to realize compersion wasn’t a typo lol. Thanks for introducing me to a new term
How is your own dating life affected by this? Are you mono? Are the people you date weirded out or put off by this arrangement at all?
Also, I need this turned into a diagram!
God, this thread is a breath of fresh air. Every time the topic came up on reddit, you had the same core of bitter whiny losers reciting the same archetype of the rejected and resentful guy stuck at home while his GF was out ‘cheating’ on him, and insisting that this was the reality in every single case.
I’m mono myself, but it’s nice to read various experiences here of poly relationships.
I personally think i’m too selfish to survive in a poly environment though, and also I’m not really that interesting of a person in general - preferring time alone mostly.
Poly requires a ton of trust and communication, so for me it would fall down quickly with the wrong kind of partner(s)… especially as it takes me a while to trust others
I actually consider myself a selfish person. But I experience huge amounts of compersion. It makes me so happy when good things happen to the people I care about. It’s selfish of me to want more than one partner and to revel in my wife’s other relationship. But I’ll be damned if senseless or traditional moralizing is going to stop me from being or making people happy.
I’m monogamous myself, but personally know two different polyamorous relationships. 1 is pretty damn good, and the other is rife with drama. Besides that, I tangentially know of others, and all of those are rough, though since I’m hearing of these from mutual friends and acquaintances, I could just be getting the juicy drama and none of the good parts. Could very well be that my info on those are bad
It does seem to mirror the general expectation, though, that most are unstable, and I wouldn’t call it surprising. Relationships are complicated, and anything that has more moving parts is going to be more complicated. I’m not trying to suggest here that monogamy is the way to go by any means–different people have different wants and needs, and some people are just good for polyamory. I just think that a working arrangement like this is tough to pull off
Besides, this gets asked a lot about polyamorous relationships, but there are so many fucked heteronormative relationships, and you never see the argument that monogamy is wrong, so yeah. Just whatever makes you happy
Most of the heteronormative relationships I’ve known of or experienced were rife with drama and problems, so I would assume poly relationships would be, too. Even if the rate is the same, you’ll be at least twice as likely to end up with a shitty relationship in a poly relationship (with at least one partner), right?
Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with poly relationships, only that there’s plenty wrong with people.
Yeah you can hold a bad traditional relationship together with duct tape and societal expectations indefinitely. You shouldn’t but there’s no kaboom or juicy details. Polyamory has more room for the failure to be catastrophic instead of a slow long decay to a couple snidely commenting on each other in a retirement home.
True although I think most relationships are unstable and have drama particularly when young, which is why people can move through so many. Most people have multiple relationships in their lives until they find someone that works (or keep going). That’s seen as normal.
I think there is a bias when people look at poly relationships as they seem novel and if they fail it’s easy to say it was because it was poly. But if a 2 partner relationship fails it’s “normal” and we accept all the reasons like “I didntnlove them anymore” or “we grew apart” etc.
There’s also the fact that in polyamory ending is not necessarily a failure for a relationship. Monogamy has an expectation of forever or certain circumstances. But in polyamory it’s sometimes acknowledged that a casual relationship can end in everyone having gotten everything they wanted out of it and deciding to move on.
Yeah, I just think the poly relationship has more places where things can go wrong. In a monogamous one, you need to two people who like each other and are compatible. In a poly, even with only 3 people, you need A and B to be compatible, A and C, and C and B. Adding one extra person into the mix complicates the relationship 3-fold depending on the nature of those relationships. They don’t all have to be in a relationship with one another, but you’re still adding more avenues for drama and collapse in one relationship, not to mention how one relationship could impact the other. If A is having drama with C, the frustration of that failing connection could also impact their relationship with B. I think it’s easier to fail not by any sort of moral failing of polyamorous people, only that the nature of those relationships is inherently less stable through its myriad of moving parts
But there is for sure an element of bias, where heteronormativity gets a pass for being the standard
Back when me and my wife started dating, it was a long distance relationship and we agreed that it’s OK if we see other people too. Neither of us did, but I feel like “expanding relationship” should only happen when your primary deal is in healthy state and not to try fix issues in it by dating someone else.
Yep, ‘opening up’ to fix a bad relationship is as terrible an idea as having a child to fix one.
Poly relationships are fine and great and positive, but they absolutely need a solid, healthy foundation to rest on.
Yeah the way I like to describe that is that nonmonogamy can solve relationship problems but only the ones caused by needing nonmonogamy. Alternatively learning poly philosophies has done wonders for some monogamous people I know. They may not get compersion from a partner seeing someone else, but they do have the words to recognize and appreciate the happiness of being a loved one’s joy. And they communicate great too.
Yep, same boat. We’ve been married for 20+ years, she’s had a boyfriend for 5 years or so and occasionally plays with other people, BF’s wife’s as cool with it as I am, everything’s chill.
She left her earrings on the dresser at her boyfriend’s place a while back, he sent his wife to drop them back to her and it was just an omg hiiiiii moment for both of them.
I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal for most people, I really don’t. It’s so utterly low-stress and completely… ordinary, to my way of thinking.
