You can love two people

[notmyusualnametoday]

This is just a thought that has occurred to me after reading a few other threads about affairs etc.

People seem to believe that you can only ever love one man/woman at once and if you're married and having an affair with someone else you must not love your wife/husband otherwise you wouldn't be having an affair.

You can have two children and love them both. Why not two men/women?

Not that I believe love and affairs are really necessarily always one and the same. Another thing MN disagrees with. Sometimes it's just sex for both parties irrespective of husbands/wives at home. They see each other, want to shag and simply do. No more, no less. Just sex.

Then don't take marriage vows
What is the point of starting this thread?
Entertainment?

If you are lying to one of them, then you don't love them.

Loving two people is fine if both know about eachother and everyone is ok with it. Polyamory is what that is called.

Sneaking around behind your partner's back shows a complete lack of respect and care for them, and means you are untrustworthy. How is that love?

People will have different views on this and all entitled opinions but affairs hurt people and they can destroy lives depending on the affair.

Yes there are complications and yes nothing is black and white.
But comparing them to loving two children is absolutely absurd and incredibly niave and childish.

That's an excuse cheaters use.

When you have your first child you don't make a promise to forsake all other children.

And what people agree is ok in their relationship is their business and I'm sure there are open marriages where 'just sex' is fine. But more usually 'just sex' is a deal-breaker for the other partner. So if you unilaterally decide that you want to have sex with someone else it is, once again, a breach of trust, a lack of respect, and a lack of care.

OP, your idea of love seems quite odd, otherwise why would you need this pointed out?

I agree...but with the caveat that if you find yourself in love with two people when you're in a monogamous relationship, you need to think about whether monogamy is for you, and what that means for your monogamous relationship. this is the hard bit, because we're not set up as a society to allow for easy discussion about this within the confines of our relationships. If you fall in love with someone else when you're in a monogamous relationship, that's a profoundly difficult thing to experience, and is generally interpreted as infidelity even if there is no physical relationship (the 'emotional affair' which is often discussed here). Just allowing yourself to get close enough to someone else for these feelings to develop is a betrayal of marriage vows, and so I think it's often unsurprising that people who are (genuinely) polyamorous don't allow themselves to acknowledge this, even to themselves, for a long time and experience a lot of sense of guilt and shame around it.

If you all have an open relationship fine.

But most people who love "two people" actually love one -themselves -willing to lie, cheat and abuse those around them in order to "have their cake and eat it".

I had an ex who knew my history with an abusive ex and yet for the 3 months we dated he texted me 20 times a day loving me and also his ex wife. Game over when I found out. He played the "poor me" card -saying his only "crime" was to love two women at once. That wasn't love to me but abuse.

posted too soon. but, really, you have to do this if you find yourself in this position. the central tenet of a poly relationship is open and honest communication. it's important that everyone knows what's going on. Otherwise it's just cheating.

How’s your affair going?

I'm not having an affair 🙂
I used to be very black and white about relationships and marriage but as I get older I increasingly find myself feeling that it's not that simple. Affairs are so common. It sometimes seems strange that monogamy is seen as the norm and sex is seen as a big deal and something that should really only be done between the same two people and that doing it with other people must Mean Something.

I believe someone can love 2 people....but if you're supposed to in a monogamous relationship and you are cheating with someone else then the love is not the right kind of love, it's selfish love because they are not showing their partner the faithful love that they deserve and they are risking causing immense emotional harm to their partner so it's selfish love because if they had real, genuine love for their partner they wouldn't risk putting them through that.

On the surface many people will say you can love two people at the same time.

I would question that the person who says that has questionable values.

As in, what they consider love.

If one of the partners does not know the other person loves two people, then they are creating hurt.

Hurt is not part of love.

The problem isn't really with 'loving two people' though, is it, OP? It's about proving you don't think much of someone you profess to love by practicing active deception and lies and secret keeping.

If it's all out in the open and everyone is truly happy then that's a totally different situation.

Are you married?

What the f are you going on about?
If you're married then yes sex with other people is a big deal. Usually. Unless it's a different type of marriage where the other partner doesn't care if you sleep around.
That's not rocket science

Oh dear, I can feel another marriage breaking up.

@notmyusualnametoday I think you raise a valid point. Though I have never seen a thread about polyamory end well on MN before... I dated someone who is/was polyamorous and I was genuinely open to the idea. I was previously in a 12-year relationship (10 years married!) where the sex has dwindled and having DCs have seriously affected the marriage so I wasn’t sure long term monogamy is the answer...

It so happened that I ended up dating two men only because I happened to start dating them both at the same time and we were not at the stage of discussing exclusivity. The guy who is poly was also open about dating one other woman. For a while, I could genuinely see me loving the both of them but in such different ways - they were polar opposites and I enjoyed doing different things on dates with them - one was highly educated and worked in a demanding job, the other a bohemian artist...

I explored the idea of polyamory - read about it and listened to a million podcasts and I actually loved the concept and could understand it intellectually (I mean, I was living it for a while!) but eventually when it came down to it, I just couldn’t do it. Even though I was okay with dating two men, I really did not like the idea of my potential partner dating someone else. I know... I know... It was like I could not make that final leap. Ultimately I wanted someone who put me first and vice versa. I felt like a failure for a bit that I could not embrace polyamory as a concept for myself. But I think it would have messed me up mentally. I’m still trying to work out if it is me personally who cannot accept it or just years of societal norms that make me so.

There’s a great podcast called Multiamory you can listen to. It’s about polyamory but deals with relationship concepts etc and I have learned a lot from it. Not just about polyamory but about relationships in general. My view now is that you have to treat each relationship differently and make up your own rules with your partner and not just accept standard monogamy rules as the default. They did an interesting podcast about ‘conscious monogamy’ and it was all about defining the rules of a relationship with your partner. For example, what constitutes cheating? What kind of emotional support do you expect from them? Can they go to the movies with both male/female friends is that something reserved as a couple activity? It may seem trivial but they are not and you can see the amount of misunderstanding and arguments different acceptable boundaries have caused just on these boards alone. These are things to discuss with your partner and you cannot accept and assume the societal norms (sex is cheating, kissing is not etc...) are acceptable by your partner.

Also, it will be almost inevitable in every relationship that at some point, one party will be attracted to someone else. How do you deal with that as a couple? It’s all very interesting...

Loving openly and freely fine.

Lying and betrayal not so good.

Depends on how it is conducted for all parties involved. At least allow people to make choices based on the facts.

Well yes, people can love many people at once and in different ways.

Feelings are feelings.
Actions however, are a series of choices that an individual is entirely responsible for.

Monogamy is the norm for fundamentally strong reasons. The family unit is stronger in a healthy monogamous set up.

Everyone is different and values different opportunities in life though, some people are asexual and never have a romantic relationship, someone else is monogamous ( one relationship throughout their entire life), most have multiple relationships.

Nothing is right or wrong, as long as you don't lie and screw someone else over while you are doing it.

Most have one relationship at a time, some have multiple relationships at the same time ( some honestly, most not)

How is you coming onto a board and saying " you can love two people" any different from someone else telling me to love one? I personally don't want to love more than one person. I have an amazing life with so much more than just romantic relationships..... and one man who I have loved for a very long time. I am monogamous and have been with him since I was a teenager. I'm happy with that.

Of course you can want two people OP. But you can’t lie to and deceive someone who trusts you and feel real love for them. By deceiving them you make them an adversary-some one who is no longer your friend in some regard. And when you know that you wouldn’t forgive them for the same offence - that level of betrayal is not love.
When you love your children there is no secret betrayal involved- if there were - then you wouldn’t really love your children either would you?