To think that consensual non-monogamy is usually a recipe for disaster?

Wow. No need to be nasty about disagreeing with me. I do have strong and appropriate feelings for my wife and care for her deeply.

I'm not saying that relationships are a hobby. The comparison is about a person's intimate partner remaining an independent person, and so there existing the potential to do other things.

I don't think that makes me a danger to people I'm in relationships with.

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to non gender childbirth and breastfeeding and maternity leave!

You just know, or need to know, what goes on in everyone's relationship or bedroom.

That should be 'don't know'

It's a disaster when people use it as a hail mary to fix an unhealthy relationship or if one party pressures the other.

This is so true.

It's as effective as a sticking plaster baby!

It's like any relationship - if the boundaries and what you do works for both parties it works well. If they don't it doesn't.

I've met swinging couples where you can tell right away one of them isn't into it, but equally I've met monogamous couples where you can tell one is the selfish one and the other one runs around after them. One of the big differences is that it tends to blow up quickly in non-monogamous relationships, rather than people plodding along unhappily for 20 years.

I benefit more than DH from our set up - it's massively easier for me to find guys and other women to have fun with than it is for him to find women to meet with purely because of the fact there are much more men and bi women at clubs/on swinging sites looking for women than there are women looking for men.

There's also an imbalance in how many non-monogamous relationships break down compared to how many people think break down - most swinging couples don't share the fact they swing with all and sundry.

So whilst you think two of the two relationships involving non monogamy that you know failed, you quite possibly know several more. You just know, or need to know, what goes on in everyone's relationship or bedroom.

I don’t gender chores in my current monogamous relationship!

I'd like a tradwife for sure. Someone who doesn't mind doing wife work.

I think it sounds great, honestly. I always think living with two partners would be really nice. Everyone’s different!

Those are insightful comments @gannet and perhaps I need to go away and think about them. Thanks.

but if two people in a relationship don't begrudge each other the time they spend on hobbies, or platonic relationships, then is time spent cultivating a second intimate relationship really that different?

@knittingdad

I am really very surprised that you believe that cultivating an intimate relationship is similar to a hobby. Intimate relationships are the absolute core of our emotional lives. Have you not noticed how strongly people feel about the people they are intimate with, that emotional connections trigger incredibly powerful emotions? This has been true since the beginning of time. People who have sexual or romantic relationships are intimate. If you are intimate you might lose your appetite, not be able to sleep, might be prepared to sacrifice things, even become violent when faced with loss. Most people know this and they protect themselves from the turbulence by limiting the relationships they get into.

Intimate relationships are NOT hobbies and if you honestly think that then you should ask yourself why you lack these feelings yourself and wonder what harm you may do to those around you.

Asking "do you really love your partner" is a weird question. Do you really love your kids if you have more than one? Of course.

Why it makes the relationships better is analogy-worthy. l love roast dinners. But having a roast dinner every single meal for the entirety of my life would make me hate roast dinners faster than anything else. Some days I want pizza. Or pasta. Or soup. I never get bored of roast dinners because I look forward to them when I do have one, rather than it being the only option on the menu every single time.

You wouldn't restrict yourself to wearing the exact same clothes daily, or committing to the same car your whole life, or only having one friend, this is no different.

The trouble with your conclusion is that you think "benefits men" as oppositional to, and mutually exclusive with, "benefits women".

Women (who enjoy sex) absolutely benefit from greater sexual access, less judgment around exploring their sexuality and freedom to have more sexual partners. If they're hetero or bi then... yes, I suppose men would also benefit from that, but you can't have the former without the latter. As someone who's very thankful to have had a sex life I'd have been judged and shamed for even a few decades ago, I can assure you that I did it primarily for my benefit.

I'm not non-monogamous, but I've toyed with the idea and don't find it particularly unusual. The idea of it doesn't bother me emotionally, but ultimately I think I'm a bit too introverted and selfish to want to juggle multiple partners. I've got a lot of friends in the poly community and they all seem very gregarious, extroverted types who don't especially enjoy being alone.

Non-monogamy is only a disaster when a couple go into it without proper, honest, open communication. It actually requires more radical honesty to be a success than traditional monogamy, the precise rules of your particular non-monogamy and all the potential wrinkles and boundaries need to be talked through. It's a disaster when people use it as a hail mary to fix an unhealthy relationship or if one party pressures the other.

But monogamy with poor communication skills tends to be a shitshow too (see: half of MN).

Also in every hetero poly setup I know the women benefit far, far more than the men in terms of increased options. Like, 90% of the time. Poly women have their pick of sexual partners, poly men rarely do.

• Not all poly people are married, so a lot of the time that wouldn't apply - many are poly precisely because they don't want/can't have all their emotional and sexual needs met by one person
• Even if they were married: that's imposing one interpretation onto marriage and assuming that's why everyone does it. Lots of reasons why people get married that aren't for that specific dynamic - for financial or citizenship reasons, for companionship, etc. None of which would preclude having other partners
• And some people are married and do consider that their relationship with their spouse is their primary emotional and sexual one, but that still doesn't preclude them having other, different emotional and sexual relationships with others

I said upthread it wouldn't work for me (mainly from a logistical POV!) but I do think it's not that difficult to envision a world where people have multiple happy relationships at once. I find it quite strange that it's so difficult to grasp (not you specifically, just generally!) - we would think anyone over the age of about 16 who had one Best Friend who fulfilled all their friendship needs as a bit childish or intense, and yet we expect our romantic/sexual partners to do so and then find it surprising when some people do it differently.

"open myself up and be vulnerable"

What maudlin nonsense is this? Marriage is a legal and financial contract—originally created to control women's reproduction—with some fancy language about love and god often added.

Recognising that it's perfectly normal for people to want a change after the child-rearing years would be much healthier all round. If people wanted to stick it out to death, that's fine, but they'd be rare.

What marriage needs is the sentimentality taking out of it.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, people use failed poly relationships to 'prove' it doesn't work/is bad/is purely for the man. Conveniently ignoring the huge percentage of monogamous relationships that fail.

From posts on here lots of people enter into them with entirely unrealistic beliefs that they can control how their partner will feel about person they start seeing. Not only is this quite a disgusting way to treat the 'other partners' - who are commodified as mere bodies to be shagged, but its also ridiculous to think you can control how emotions develop between your spouse and someone else he is having an relationship with.

Why is it 'gross'? I think what you mean is that you find it gross, which is not the same thing.

It wouldn't work for me, but I have friends in varying forms of non-monogamous relationships and most of them seem very happy with it. The ones that don't are a couple where it's clearly driven by the wife's higher sex drive and the husband hoping she won't leave him - in those cases I think it's obviously not going to work. But I have multiple other friends who are very happily non-mongamous/polygamous.

I fundamentally disagree with this. For me, the value of a long-term committed relationship is precisely in making an open-ended commitment to another, because that commitment makes it easier for everyone involved to trust the others to be open, honest and vulnerable.

If I knew that the relationship with my wife had an expiry date then I'd find it much harder to open myself up and be vulnerable.

I think this is true of monogamous and non-monogamous relationships.

You’re only imagining it in the context of the mono relationships you know.

my relationships aren’t equal, I don’t split my time between like a child with separated parents!

I have different relationships with different people that we design between us to suit our wants and needs

My wife and I have talked about this a bit, and mutually agreed it's not for us, but one of the things that came up was that my wife would want the reassurance that she would remain my primary emotional and sexual partner and vice versa. So I don't see that as an issue

Society places all sorts of expectations and taboos on relationships and sex, but if two people in a relationship don't begrudge each other the time they spend on hobbies, or platonic relationships, then is time spent cultivating a second intimate relationship really that different?

I can't say logically that it is, though I think that I would personally find that it would make me feel too insecure.

Ain't that the truth!

Non-monogamy often doesn't work, I agree, but neither does long-term monogamy.

It's ludicrous that we still maintain the pretence that lifelong happy marriage is even desirable, let alone possible for the majority of people.

If we acknowledged and expected that most relationships have a natural expiry date, and structured society around that expectation, there'd be a lot less heartache and angst all round.

Long term I don't see how it can work without one or another person getting jealous.

Feelings are fluid. While you might have been happy to be 1 of 3 at the start, you can't be scrupulously "equal" so resentment is bound to arise, unless of course you really don't give a shit and if that's the case, then why bother?