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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Is being polyamorous a real thing?

114 replies

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 03:09

I would never have thought so. I assume that being "poly" is just a fancy way of saying you want to have your cake and eat it!

However, I have this new friend. She says that for her whole marriage, she has been "monogamous plus 1," as she puts it. She has had a small number of long-term partners in addition to her husband, who has had the same.

Here's the thing: I assumed it was a bit of a free-for-all and that they were practising consensual non-monogamy. But it seems that they are always "monogamous plus 1" - and here's the kicker - they really seem to love both their spouse and their partner!!!!!

I could never focus on more than one person.

But do you think that some people really are capable of loving two people? Like, they have so much love they need to love two people?! 🤣 I'm serious though - these two seem to be capable of so much love that they seem to need two people to love! It doesn't seem to be about sex - they both seem committed to both the people in their lives!

They don't do foursomes or threesomes or anything. They both think of themselves as having a primary partner (each other, married) and a secondary partner.

My mind is blown, but I'm trying not to judge.

OP posts:
JHound · 10/04/2025 11:29

Yes. It is a real thing.

Of course it is. Polyamorous people exist. Thus it is real.

JHound · 10/04/2025 11:31

I genuinely don’t get why so many people struggle with the concept of human variety, not everybody being a monolith and different people being different.

StellaAndCrow · 10/04/2025 11:33

It's a lifestyle choice rather than a sexual orientation.

MrsInfographic · 10/04/2025 11:36

The older I get the more I realise that most things in life is just made up. Days of the week, economy and all the social “norms”

poly isn’t for me - but I can understand how it suits a lot of people.

At the end of the day we’re merely animals on a planet!

JHound · 10/04/2025 11:37

Terrythefish · 10/04/2025 08:13

This is absolute bollocks. I don’t know why this gets spouted so much. Romeo and Juliette is about romantic love. And that was written in the 1600s. There are references in the Hebrew Bible using romantic love as a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people.

Throughout literature and time and cultures you will find references to romantic love.

Do you really think we have ‘invented’ an emotion that we now all feel? How did that happen? Did evil scientists make it in a lab 100 years ago and release it in a smoke over the world?

But Romeo and Juliet became such a big timeless classic because of love as it’s central story. Love has always existed but much of human partnership throughout history was about practicality, family formation, access to sex. Love was a happy side effect but not the main point.

Hemlocked · 10/04/2025 11:38

How long have they been married?

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 10/04/2025 11:38

I don't see why people wouldn't be able to love more than one person at once. What constitutes romantic love anyway? It's just sexual attraction and personality compatibility imo.Arguably it's just a romanticised idea to cement monogamy. I'm all for monogamy though, and am happily married. I think polyamory sounds messy, complicated and unsuited to family life.

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:47

Hemlocked · 10/04/2025 11:38

How long have they been married?

32 years.

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ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:49

JHound · 10/04/2025 11:29

Yes. It is a real thing.

Of course it is. Polyamorous people exist. Thus it is real.

But my point is, are poly people just making up a fancy way to say they want to shag around? Or are they really wired up a bit differently from monogamous people?

OP posts:
ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:51

MrsInfographic · 10/04/2025 11:36

The older I get the more I realise that most things in life is just made up. Days of the week, economy and all the social “norms”

poly isn’t for me - but I can understand how it suits a lot of people.

At the end of the day we’re merely animals on a planet!

Love this!

During the worst time of my marriage, I used to console myself that marriage is made-up too, and we weren't really bound with this invisible thread.

OP posts:
Smallmercies · 10/04/2025 12:54

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:49

But my point is, are poly people just making up a fancy way to say they want to shag around? Or are they really wired up a bit differently from monogamous people?

Most "monogamous" people have affairs.

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:54

Terrythefish · 10/04/2025 07:05

They are not really committed to the second partner though are they? As they keep one constant partner and have a series of changing boyfriends/girlfriends.

I have no doubt that people can have affection for more than one person, but your friends’ dynamic sound no different from affairs. The secondary ( or affair) partner is simply used to keep the main relationship going. The secondary partners are disposable and temporary. Your mates are just having ( using) a series of affair partners, it’s just that they are doing it openly. I suspect quite a number of those partners get hurt.

In real life the couple of occasions I come across this, that is what happened. The chosen ‘secondary’ partner ended up badly hurt, because they really fell for the ‘married’ person. The married person had deliberately picked a really nice guy, the type of person who would fall in love with them. One ‘married’ woman admitted they chose men like this as it felt nice for them to get all that love. When the secondary partner gets hurt and says they felt used, the ‘married’ partner just shrugs and says ‘I was honest with you’. But thats shit isn’t it? You are still using someone to love you, when you know you love someone else more, and this other person is just there to keep your marriage going. It is using people.

So in the rare cases of genuine polyamory where the ‘nesting’ couple have permanent other partners, who genuinely are equals with the nesting partner, okay.

But your friend’s arrangement I think is just a series of affairs dressed up in a modern label and where the affair partner is used and risks getting hurt.

I agree with all this - this is how it seems to me. What's the difference between polyamory and consensual non-monogamy?

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ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:57

turkeyboots · 10/04/2025 07:09

I've never met a poly relationship which survived the birth of a child. 90% of the handful of real examples I know, the man dropped the mother to a lesser relationship tier and concentrated on the child free women. Maybe it works better childfree, or with adult children?

God, that's awful.

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Supersimkin7 · 10/04/2025 12:57

In poly, ‘to love’ means ‘to fuck’.

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:58

Smallmercies · 10/04/2025 12:54

Most "monogamous" people have affairs.

Is it really most? I believe the majority of anonymous surveys say something like 30%, but don't quote me.

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ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:58

Supersimkin7 · 10/04/2025 12:57

In poly, ‘to love’ means ‘to fuck’.

That's what I reckon!

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Sunshineandoranges · 10/04/2025 12:58

I met someone who told me how successful this arrangement was for her..then next time I met her she was getting divorced.

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 13:07

WrylyAmused · 10/04/2025 08:40

Oh god, this again.

Yes it's possible. Yes, plenty of people do it, and you only tend to hear about the unsuccessful ones, in the same way that you only hear about people's shit supposedly monogamous relationships on MN - almost nobody posts about how great and smooth their relationship is, they post when it's in trouble.

I've spent most of my life in "committed living-together primary plus one other deep emotional commitment" type relationships.
I don't think I have more or less love to give than others - what I do have is a lack of jealousy a good sense of security in my relationships, and an understanding that both I and my partners can very much love and be committed to each other, and also have similarly intense relationships with others.

Someone upthread said it's not the same as with parents, siblings, children, friends where you can love more than one at a time - well, for us, it is. I have never understood the mentality that just because you have a sexual/romantic relationship with someone, they must be the only one, whereas with all other forms of love it is reasonable to share that between multiple people.

Live your life however you want, but it's as ridiculous and judgemental to say poly relationships aren't as real or deep as others as it would be to say the same about same sex relationships, or age gap ones, or anything else you personally don't happen to approve of or understand.

And yes, I would also agree that there are many people who misuse the "poly" label to mean they want to fuck around, that their partner may not know or be coerced into it, or that aren't able to have multiple respectful relationships. But those things all occur in supposedly monogamous relationships as well - there are rubbish people in all strands of life.

And @ThisFluentBiscuit

"Part of me thinks it's all just a big joke and that it's just an excuse to get their leg over more than one person. But why not just have casual sex with others, then? Why get into a second deep relationship?"

How about because it's not in the least about "getting a leg over", but about the emotional intimacy and connection I have with a particular person?
I don't like casual sex, have had 3 partners in 15+ years, and value deep, committed and emotional relationships, as do my partners. It's just that apparently they're not in a format that you judge to be acceptable...

Thank you for contributing; that's really interesting.

OP posts:
WiddlinDiddlin · 10/04/2025 13:26

The successful poly relationships I know of... yeah I'd say they're wired up a bit differently. Lacking jealousy on the whole, not feeling excluded or left out at any point. All people who are very secure, confident in themselves, no narc/control/lying arseholes etc!

Also the poly relationships I know who are stable, sensible, long term - all people in their 50s/60s +. Mature adults with plenty of life experience.

I also know and have personal experiences of poly relationships in my late teens, early 20s and it was fun but theres a fuck of a lot of jealousy and insecurity, fucking around and upsetting each other. But thats young adults for you I think.

I certainly learned a lot about myself, as did my partner and we've been together now 20 years, but are now monogamous (on the whole because it is far too much effort to add other people into our lives, we simply haven't the time!).

JHound · 10/04/2025 13:37

ThisFluentBiscuit · 10/04/2025 12:49

But my point is, are poly people just making up a fancy way to say they want to shag around? Or are they really wired up a bit differently from monogamous people?

Maybe what they say is how they feel. We don’t have to understand it.

It’s like asking if people who say they don’t want children are pretending or people who don’t like spices.

Also polyamorous means so many things to so many people. It’s not for me but it can work for those who are poly. Monogamy, even now globally is not standard everywhere (and in many cultures it’s not expected for men, and not always followed by wealthy men.)

I think also they must feel jealousy differently but that’s the same for many people. For example people have multiple different views on whether men and women can be friends.

WrylyAmused · 10/04/2025 13:57

Terrythefish · 10/04/2025 08:13

This is absolute bollocks. I don’t know why this gets spouted so much. Romeo and Juliette is about romantic love. And that was written in the 1600s. There are references in the Hebrew Bible using romantic love as a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people.

Throughout literature and time and cultures you will find references to romantic love.

Do you really think we have ‘invented’ an emotion that we now all feel? How did that happen? Did evil scientists make it in a lab 100 years ago and release it in a smoke over the world?

Romeo and Juliette is also about a 13yo girl and 15yo boy, so it's hardly a role model story for a bunch of reasons.

It was not a "golden story" about romantic love when it was written - everyone ends up dead because of their obsessive love and inability to consider anything else!!
In the social context of the time, it was far more about the dangers of obsessive love and lust, unrestricted by social conventions and family input. We have romanticised it over the years to something it never was.

Arranged marriages for property and alliance reasons (not love!) were the norm in most societies for most of history. And the pair bonds were for similar reasons - pre DNA tests, you wanted to be sure that your wife's children were also biologically yours, so in a pre contraceptive and pre DNA society that meant you had to restrict who people (women!) slept with to have confidence in bloodlines for the purposes of inheritance.

This is also why it was normal and accepted in much of history for men to have mistresses and as long as they paid for them, and any resulting children, it was not much of an issue because it didn't affect bloodlines and inheritance.

We over-emphasize and romanticise the importance of romantic love in the past - it really wasn't a significant factor, and yes, it came up in poetry and novels, but largely didn't reflect people's day to day life in many ways. Chivalrous love, for example, from the medieval period, was never focused on one's spouse...
Plus with the number of women dying in childbirth, multiple sequential wives was often a reality.

There are actually also quite a number of societies that don't/didn't practice pair bonding - mostly nomadic ones where property/inheritance was not the major issue it was in other societies. And these were largely stamped out when the Christian missionaries came, because they didn't approve and believed there was only one "godly" way to do relationships .

But interesting as all these points are, they're kind of irrelevant.

Some people want to organise their lives in certain ways. As long as people find other people who want the same, and are honest, open and respectful about it, then it's really none of anyone else's business. We each have our own experience of "love". It's not for anyone to dictate what anyone else's experience of that is or should be.

You want monogamy - fantastic, I wish you every happiness in that. You want polyamory - great, I wish you just as much joy. You want to fuck about with lots of people - as long as everyone has fully informed consent and happily agrees to it, also great.

Generally, no-one in the minority groups is trying to make people live in a way they don't want. Whether that's being vegan, religious, poly, childfree, gay, or a million other life options. So if you're part of the majority, please extend the same courtesy and try to avoid making derogatory comments about things you don't personally understand or want to do.

Terrythefish · 10/04/2025 14:17

JHound · 10/04/2025 11:37

But Romeo and Juliet became such a big timeless classic because of love as it’s central story. Love has always existed but much of human partnership throughout history was about practicality, family formation, access to sex. Love was a happy side effect but not the main point.

The claim I responded to was not that love has always existed but people married for practical reasons, but that romantic love is a social construct 100 years old and lust is timeless.

Royalty and aristocrats were married to build alliances between families and countries ( or, in the case of James 1st of England, because the King fancied a nice party so ordered young courtiers to marry), but poorer people have always had more freedom to marry for love if they could find it. Even amongst the Royalty and aristocrats there is clear written evidence of there being love between Kings and Mistresses, and aristocrats and mistresses. I have even read one touching case of an aristocratic woman having a long term affair with her children's much younger male tutor, with written expressions of love from between them both into her old age.

There has always been romantic love between couples. This idea that romantic love is about 100 years old ( and I have heard that claim elsewhere too) is absolute nonsense.

Terrythefish · 10/04/2025 14:33

@WrylyAmused

Sorry, where did I claim Romeo and Juliet was a model golden story? I said it was a story of that shows romantic love existed between people. In fact your own interpretation of that story is that romantic love was recognised as existing at the time and social structures were put in place amongst the wealthy to remove its impact and power in marriage choices.

I am very well aware of why Kings and powerful men had mistresses whereas women were not allowed them. I've studied Tudor history, thanks. Though its pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than five minutes really,. And yet romantic love persisted between people, as I said above. Rich people may not have married for love but that does no mean they did not experience romantic love when they had the opportunity.

And as you acknowledge, yes it did come up in literature, and that's because it existed and people recognised it.

It never ceases to amaze that people seem to think that people in the past were not people like us, with our evolved emotions, but were somehow different with different emotions.

ArtTheClown · 10/04/2025 15:54

I can't find the documentary now, but I saw one on youtube where a chubby, clearly insecure young woman was trying to portray her situation was wonderful - husband had introduced another woman, a very slim, confident and attractive one. You could tell that husband and woman number 2 were more into each other, chubby woman clearly thought it was that or lose him altogether, and was insanely flattered that slim woman was also her "sweetie" (which I suspected was a token keep-her-happy thing).

It looked miserable and she's probably been dumped by now.

The Louis Theroux documentenary looked just as miserable - one person living their best lives, with their boring security at home looking tearful but desperately saying how seeing their spouse happy just makes them happy, while said spouse swans off to shag the exciting new person.

scorpiogirly · 10/04/2025 15:55

No, just an easy way to have your cake and eat it