To request mumsnet to add a 'polyamorous families' section under parenting?

[whycantwegoonasthree]

There's every other kind of family type, pretty much, and polyamorous families have some unique joys and challenges that it would be nice to share and discuss.

Or maybe we're the last frontier and even MN aren't ready to go there.

Yet.

No, I'm not missing the point, I just view it differently to you. I have absolutely NO problem with ANY sexual partners (be they 2, 3, 4 or whatever) choosing to have sex without condoms as this is what works for them.

I have a problem with giving it a special name in a way that makes it something countercultural with a symbolic meaning. It is the naming of it as "fluid bonding" that I find problematic, not the actual practice of choosing to have sex without condoms with a specific set of partners because you trust those particular partners.

And actually fluid bonding whenever I have heard it used with PA couples specifically suggests you WILL be sleeping around but you will use condoms/barriers with some partners and choose not to with others. That's the usual term when I have come across it and I think that's a fool's game.

And if you want to know why I, as a feminist, find fluid bonding problematic, read a link like this:

polytripod.blogspot.ie/2013/04/poly-101-fluid-bonding.html

It took "time" to "iron out the kinks" with his wife that he was going to fluid bond with his girlfriend Gina because she was hurt by it. I'll bet it did. In ANY OTHER discussion of human relationships, if you have to persuade someone else to be happy with you having sex with someone else, you are being coercive, abusive and a DICK - but slap PA on it and that's okay?

And then this wondrous thing where we are pretending that fluid exchange F to M is the same as M to F because he happens to know a "squirter", when anyone with even the vaguest knowledge about sexual health knows full well that F to M exchange is much, much rarer than M to F, and F to F exchange virtually non-existent so really, no matter how you dress it up, you are talking about PIV.

And the knowing thing about his poor deluded parents worrying about STIs when he himself mentions difficult times with STI scares within a PA network.

Honestly, it's a recipe for fricking disaster, all of it.

If OP or any other person has a happily negotiated equal committed sexual relationship with a number of partners I am all for it, fair play to them and well done, too, for rising above many of the animalistic difficulties many people have with non-monogamy. I think it's quite evolved when it works well... however, I also think given the foibles of humanity there are going to be instances of PA set ups where not everyone is a willing, equal partner or worthy of trust and setting fluid bonding as a standard is just inviting disaster that will disproportionately affect women.

There's every other kind of family type, pretty much, and polyamorous families have some unique joys and challenges that it would be nice to share and discuss.

Actually, I just had another look, and there are clearly some family types, including my own, that are not included. My family type will have a larger representation in the population than yours, I can assure you, since its population is increasing by over 100,000 population per year in the US alone.

If I needed information or discussion in this regard, I'd either post elsewhere on this site, or use a specialist forum.

I just googled for poly forums. There's quite a few out there. Great sources of info and support if that's what you want. Which makes me even more sure your post is not a genuine desire for a useful discussion board, it's a desire to discuss yourself and your new set up.

And if I needed confirmation of that, I'd look to the irony of your weekend posting. While initially suggesting you wanted a place to discuss the unique challenges of your family, out of 105 posts, you then proceed to discuss mainly yourself, your DP, and his OSO, with barely a nod to your own small children. That's an awful lot of time spent on you and your relationship rather than your actual family.

Why not just post in Relationships, as it seems that is really what you want to discuss?

If every fringe group wanted their own subforum the site would be an unmanageable and barely navigable mass of barely visited tumbleweed sub- sub- sub-forums.

Of course there are some guys who identify as poly who are dickheads. The relationships board here is not exactly an advert for monogamy either.

(By the way, "PA" is not an acronym for polyamory that I have seen anywhere other than this thread. Poly is the generally used abbreviation)

Got to page 20 and couldn't see a post that already said what I want to say.

Personally I have no opinion on the poly side of things.

What I cannot get my head round is the fact that you have - to all intents and purposes - moved a man into your children's home and become financially tied to him WITHOUT THEM KNOWING.

How did that even come to pass? I can't imagine moving a man into my house and legally and financially tying myself to him before my children had met him.

Regardless of who is sleeping with whom in your set up, that, by anyone's standards, is incredibly remiss. And to me, I'm afraid it reads that you have put your own romantuc relationships above the children.

If we're talking about 'emotional hierarchy', it seems obvious to me that your children are at the bottom of the pile in this narrative.

I hope for their sake that your financial and legal arrangements are watertight.

(By the way, "PA" is not an acronym for polyamory that I have seen anywhere other than this thread. Poly is the generally used abbreviation)

And one of the major rules of online communication is that you use the abbreviations currently in use in the context you're in, which on this thread has been PA. HTH (given that your comment was clearly intended as the other kind of PA).

Yup, loads of men are dicks. Which is why fluid bonding is a feminist issue.

For everyone saying try other forums why the fuck should the OP.

This is a site for parenting and the op is asking for a part of the site to reflect their particular parenting issues.

Anything else being discussed about the op is just a load of judgmental bollocks.

Got an email form MNHQ regarding my reuqest - they're having a look at this thread and are going to 'weigh things up'.

To which I though, er... Good luck.

As a round up:

– I think there were four (?) people on here prepared to say they were currently in a poly relationship. Not sure how many other similarly-minded lurkers who saw the tone of the discussion and gave it a massive bodyswerve.

– There are evidently lots of aspects of parenting within a poly context which are pretty unique. And to do that in a place where one wouldn't constantly be to be berated with "will no-one think of the children" type attacks would be good.

– Relationships and general parenting boards, judging by reactions to this post, wouldn't be the best place for that. I think all posts would quickly get derailed and we'd spend all our time explaining ourselves instead. So somewhere where other poly-minded people could easily find and support each other would be great.

– Yes, there are other poly-specific forums, but they tend to be VERY specific. And Mumsnet is where I have always gone, since I was pregnant with DD1, for advice about pretty much anything. And I like the variety of people on here.

At least I think I do. Did. Dunno. Feeling a bit bruised this morning by the whole experience, if I'm honest.

Oh, and I will never ever use 'the phrase that cannot be mentioned' ever again. Promise.

It honestly was just shorthand for saying 'people with whom I have chosen to have unprotected sexual contact, directly or indirectly'. For me, anyway.

I wasn't suggesting it was something 'speshul', although obviously you don't do that other than with people you really trust, so it has that aspect, I guess.

Feminist issue. Honestly don't know.

It really was just a desire to respond to a direct question succinctly.

Fair enough - I apologise if I was heavyhanded in my response to it. I suppose I feel specifically strongly about it because of my friend's experiences with gonorrhoea, which have nothing whatsoever to do with polyamory and everything to do with exploitation and lying in sexual relationships which sadly is a risk all of us as women have to contend with, regardless of our sexual orientation or interests.

And finally, I'd like to say thank you to those who have been so supportive and considerate. Some of you consistently and unfailingly on this post and those who have PMd me too. And those who came in with genuine questions and were prepared to listen to the answers and adjust your thinking where justified. And those who came in and had a go, and then came back and apologised later on.

You're the people who make Mumsnet great.

Christ on a bike. I rarely butt heads with anyone on MN but this is the second time I've felt the need to speak out, for the same reason. The other one was someone asking for recommendations for similar websites to one that a bunch of MNers didn't like and everyone just waded in slagging it off and bitching at the ones who did like it, etc. In this case the OP is saying "Would it be possible to have a sub-forum for this" and everyone feels the need to judge and give opinions on the thing itself. That's not what the thread is about. People should respect that! I am agog reading some of these responses.

It's one thing to say "it's maybe too niche" or "I'm not sure it would be well received by the MN audience" (understatement!) but the attacks on the OPs relationship are just so below the belt.

Good luck OP. I'm sorry you had to see all this bile directed at what sounds like a very contented relationship for all involved.

I agree with you Maryz.

If this was a thread about a monogamous woman who'd moved a man part time into her house and hitched her wagon to him financially and legally before her children had even met him, I think there wouldn't be so many 'right on' responses.

The polyamory is deflecting from the most shocking issue IMO.

No problem FusionConfusion. It's made me go and read up on it a bit, and you make some very good points.

Thing is Maryz and YeahNotTooBad - I wasn't actually asking, at this point, or in this place, for advice or opinions on either of those things.

But you volunteered the information so you can't expect people not to comment on those things.

Of all the aspects of your set up that have been discussed on this thread, that is the one I find most boggling.

Thanks for the update OP, think I was one of the 4 poly parents who stuck their head over the parapet.

Having thought about it. I think there is a good case for a poly board on MN. There is no UK based poly forum but even if there was, I come to MN for everything else parenting and relationship related. This thread shows just what a general lack of awareness there is generally about what poly is. I wish I had known there were other people who felt like me when I was growing up, as I was surrounded by monogamous people and thought I was the only one who struggled with it. Its taken me many years to be able to sort it out in my head and my life. I wouldn't have known to search out information on poly as I didn't know there was a name for it!

Guardian article below discusses. Actually I might move to Montreal! :)

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/25/polyamory-more-than-one-lover-emer-otoole

Good luck, OP. For what it's worth, I'm not 'right on' in my support - I'm a cradle Catholic and struggle with thinking beyond monogamy. However, I respect your right to identify howsoever you choose and am baffled by the hoards of posters insistent on telling you what your relationship is/isn't. I can certainly see that a safe space to discuss poly specific parenting/other issues would be beneficial, and why should you be denied it? Not understanding/supporting something doesn't have to mean being intolerant of it. Wishing you all the best

My god, OP: just be honest. If you wanted people to kiss your arse, why post on AIBU? You could have posted the same thread on relationships. You would have gotten fewer responses but they would have all been really favorable.

In fact, you claim to be a poly advocate but your shameless attention seeking has probably doomed your cause. You could have asked in site issues and gotten a poly board or thread on a smaller "nicer" board. People interested in poly issues would have googled or looked for it and you could have built up to a community. You wouldn't have had many lurkers at all. By the time people lurked the community, you'd have built up a proper community that would simply drown out the outsiders.

Instead you've waved a big flag to everyone on AIBU. People who now are reading this will likely pay attention to any poly topic that comes up and weigh in. They will likely outweigh actual poly families on mumsnet so every thread will likey turn out like this.

Most of the smaller active mumsnet communities don't WANT AIBU attention. I'm pretty sure that the Children with SN threads (and some others) don't even appear on the active bar because the idea is that they are there for people who need them and understand the full topic.

If that's what you wanted, you've probably guaranteed it will never happen on mumsnet because of this silly attention seeking post.

Congrats!

Quick comment

I was bought up by polyamorous parents and I can tell you that it didn't work for us as children. Infact it has had lasting damage that we are all trying to deal with adulthood. We all didn't cohabit and everyone was a "good" person - but having to explain away that situation constantly all my life has been so difficult. We had a very negetive experience of not being excepted and we were made to feel that our parents needs came before ours. I would have much preferred a conventional set up as a child - sorry to sound so unaccepting myself but I wouldn't want my child to experience it.

But surely that was a problem with the society you were in, not your parents.