Non-monogamous relationships discussion thread

[wishfuldreamer]

I know that the last time someone attempted this, it didn't end well. but, some time has passed here, and i've witnessed some more reasonable discussions - and there were enough people asking questions on a different thread that I thought maybe a separate thread might be useful, rather than derail the OP's advice more than it already was.

I realise i can't control the direction of this, but I was thinking about this more as a place for people to ask questions and a place for discussion. not really for people in happy monogamous marriages to tell ENM folks what they are doing wrong/don't understand. Monogamous marriage is a perfectly valid choice, as far as I'm concerned, it just isn't the choice for me.

anyway...the space is here if people want to discuss or ask questions.

[Bigeggsinapackoften]

*pair

[Boonlark]

I do wonder why some people get so angry about poly? I can understand feminists being concerned that it's patriarchal (although my experience is not that at all), but apart from that concern, I wonder what's going on?

[Boonlark]

@Bigeggsinapackoften

God help those of us who were paid bonded to raise kids and our marriages fell apart. Clearly we are suboptimal according to *@Ayeshstar2020*

.
Yes. Given how many mono relationships don't work out, and the amount of people who have hidden affairs, I find the openess of ENM quite refreshing.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

I think that as a medium to long term strategy these types of “relationship” are untenable because human beings are fundamentally pair bonding. Pair bonding is the only stable arrangement for people long term and of course for raising children.

From an anthropological perspective, the jury is still out on this (and some of the jury would accuse you of Eurocentrism.) What we do know, is that pair bonding has always been expected of and by women; rarely, in any culture or point in history, has it been expected of men. From the huge range of cultures which positively proscribe/d non monogamy by allowing or even encouraging men to have more than one wife; to the similar number where it was / is simply a quiet assumption that a man will marry one woman but will take courtesans, have affairs, and visit prostitutes on the side (even in the West, despite being ostensible proponents of perpetual monogamy, we still take this view to some extent: men have needs, boys will be boys, strip clubs and porn and webcamming are just a bit of fun for men, blah blah blah.) That’s patriarchy for you. Pair bonding has never been about looking out for women, but about trying to assure a man’s paternity of his children and, when we’re talking about marriage, the conveyance down the male line of family wealth. Nor is a pair bond universally recognised as the best environment for raising children: the nuclear family is a very recent and very European development (and I’m sure every one of the thousands of women who post on these boards about her OH being a lazy, shit dad who leaves her to do everything could appreciate the child-rearing model present in many cultures where all the women of the group muck in and raise the children communally.)

I also feel that broadly it’s a bit of construct weighted in favour of horny, disrespectful men.

I think that this, as has been said upthread, is broadly the result of non monogamy being taboo and therefore not talked about – so the view is very narrow. You don’t get to hear from all the women - like the many on this thread - who’ve been successfully non monogamous for years and years, and who are just getting on with being happy and pleasing themselves; just the ones for whom everything has gone wrong because their OH coerced them into a threesome or into allowing him to seek sex outside the relationship.

Unless you are part of the rich burning man “play party” orgy set who may have professional jobs but can indulge in totally unorthodox arrangements

“Rich people can make decisions about how they live their lives which aren’t always available to poor people” is surely a maxim true of any life choice you could care to think of?

[RethinkingLife]

My username says it.

I want this thread to be somewhere I can discuss this.

I'm married. I've had one sex partner in my life (husband). We haven't had sex for a very long time (not my decision). He won't consult a GP. If I'd known we'd end up here I'd have split the marriage a long time ago.

Now, I'm in the sandwich generation of more people to care for than those of us who can do it. And there is (of course) more of a back story. Yes, it would be much better if we could split. The practicalities of this are overwhelming and, from experience, not even legal intervention could compel him to act in some areas (finances).

My husband has no intention of resuming any intimacy with me. I could live the rest of my life in this way but that would only be because I lack the courage to try and make my life better. It's too easy for me to say, "Relationships don't work. All men are [flavour of disaster]. There's no point."

Somebody asked me out recently and it was such a shock to realise that maybe I do have some opportunities to improve the remainder of my life. I have no idea how to have the conversations or discussions.

I would find this thread helpful. I recognise that I don't have a good primary relationship and I'm tired of this life I live on someone else's terms.

[SignOnTheWindow]

@TackyJewellry I know a woman in (as far as I know) a happy poly relationship with two men. She's a philosopher and has written a book on love and relationships called 'What Love is and What it Could Be'. Carrie Jenkins.

[whycantwegoonasthree]

Well, maybe I'll just lurk for a bit and see what happens... I do think an actual board for this would be more helpful that a thread .

Because like you say, then everyone knows why they're here and what the board is for, those who don't like it can more easily stay away from it, but also because it's not a one thread topic.

There are discussions to be had about relationship structures, about parenting on a non-monogamous context, about consent, about being poly during Covid, about meta-relationships, about if, how and when to 'come out', about discrimination... etc etc.

I put all this to MNHQ about 5/6 years ago, but they weren't at all interested, and probably thought it would rapidly descend into a dumpster fire - which to be fair, the thread that started it really had.

It's become a lot more mainstream since then of course - especially among the twenty or thirty somethings, so maybe they'd feel different now.

But I'm still pretty reluctant to divulge too much about it here.

[Ayeshstar2020]

Sorry that was harsh but it’s pretty serious stuff where children are concerned. Just the very fact of being aware of their parents s having multiple sexual partners is troubling. I can understand why mumsnet may not want a board on this.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

@RethinkingLife - Ultimately, I’m not sure yours is the kind of relationship to which “going open” is going to be a successful solution because, like any good relationship, good non monogamous ones are built on care and respect - and it doesn’t sound as if your husband feels much of either of those things towards you. It doesn’t sound as if suggesting to him that you look elsewhere for sex would be met well, so you’d either be issuing him an ultimatum (“have sex with me or I’ll have sex with other people”) which is rarely a good place to start from; or embarking on an affair.

What have his proposed solutions been when you say you want sex in your relationship and he says he isn’t willing to have it?

[Ayeshstar2020]

I’ll stop posting as I don’t mean to offend anyone. But there is just a different view on this that’s all.

[tinierclanger]

@Ayeshstar2020

Sorry that was harsh but it’s pretty serious stuff where children are concerned. Just the very fact of being aware of their parents s having multiple sexual partners is troubling. I can understand why mumsnet may not want a board on this.

why?

[ComtesseDeSpair]

@Ayeshstar2020

I’ll stop posting as I don’t mean to offend anyone. But there is just a different view on this that’s all.

It isn’t a “different view” to accuse people of being child abusers because they involve their children in their sex lives. NM people with children don’t involve their children any more than you’d involve yours with men you meet when you are dating; and not everyone has children in the first place.

[whycantwegoonasthree]

[quote ComtesseDeSpair]@RethinkingLife - Ultimately, I’m not sure yours is the kind of relationship to which “going open” is going to be a successful solution because, like any good relationship, good non monogamous ones are built on care and respect - and it doesn’t sound as if your husband feels much of either of those things towards you. It doesn’t sound as if suggesting to him that you look elsewhere for sex would be met well, so you’d either be issuing him an ultimatum (“have sex with me or I’ll have sex with other people”) which is rarely a good place to start from; or embarking on an affair.

What have his proposed solutions been when you say you want sex in your relationship and he says he isn’t willing to have it?[/quote]
It's worth noting that "relationship broken: add more people" is such a common occurrence that it's something of a trope in the Ethically NonMono community.

Totally understandable given where you find yourself @RethinkingLife, and I have nothing but compassion for you. And I certainly don't judge you for looking for sexual fulfilment outside your marriage. But you need to be really careful of embroiling other people into what sounds like a potentially pretty damaging situation.

It's just not ethical to do so.

ENM may be the way forward for you, ultimately, and it is really good that you're questioning what's possible. But it's like that old Irish saying "If I was going there, I wouldn't start from here."

You've got to sort out your current situation, there's no way to avoid that. And ENM definitely isn't a way to avoid it.

You'd just be potentially passing some of your pain to a third party and you'd likely have a worse situation to deal with than where you are now.

[Bigeggsinapackoften]

My children have not been aware of any of my sexual partners. Being an unrepentant fornicator / poly doesn’t mean your kids are aware of your sexual partners.

[wishfuldreamer]

On kids of poly families…I don’t really understand the whole concern about sex. Do people think we’re having orgies while the babes are in bed upstairs?

Eli Sheff (sociologist) has done some great longitudinal work on poly families, with interviews with the children through to young adulthood. It’s really positive reading. Essentially boils down to whether you’re a good parent or not, just like everyone else. Monogamous households can equally be unstable or unsafe places for children. I don’t think it’s inherently about poly…but how you do it.

[whycantwegoonasthree]

Exactly @Bigeggsinapackoften

And in any case, at a point kids realise what sex is - it's in the music they listen to, alluded to in the the films and TV they watch (hell, it's probably in the TV they watch at friends' houses that we don't know about...) and advertising is practically entirely sex. So is the news at the moment.

At which point it's deeply damaging to make it a secretive and dirty thing that must be hidden, or conversely that it's only something the "people who are very much in love" do. Saying that if you have sex with someone that it must mean that they love you or you love them, or conversely saying that it's something you shouldn't be doing at all, or at least keep secret so why the culture around sex is so toxic and why so many kids get into trouble with it in one way or another.

So my kids know that I'm poly, they know my long term partners, the one who I live with, (obviously) the one who I've been in a relationship for five years, and the one I used to be in a relationship with until she got married and decided to be a bit more monogamous for a bit (we're still good friends, and my parter drove her to her wedding). The've spent time with them socially, and we do some co-operative childcare so they have good relationships with their kids too.

And yes, they know we have sex - because they asked, and I said yes. They're not in the least bit more interested than that. But secrets and lies aren't our thing - they know that if they ask a question they will get it honestly answered, or will be given a sound reason why they're not getting an answer.

But for fucks sake, it's not orgies in the sitting room at supper time.

I give it a maximum of 48 hours until I regret sharing any of this.

[TimeToDateAgain]

The remake of Scenes from a Marriage is being promoted fairly sensationally: ‘You upgrade your phone, why not your marriage?’ The TV show set to send divorce rates soaring

The contemporary version introduces a polyamorous couple.

The pair have two friends, conceived as a counterpoint. In Levi’s version, Kate and Peter are a polyamorous couple with kids. Kate’s boyfriend has finished with her, and Peter is sulking that she had one in the first place (it seems apposite to note that he started it, with the polyamory). “Kate says she feels very proud that her children can actually see her looking for her own happiness and self-actualisation,” Levi says. “I wrote that in a very ironic way, but it was perceived [by reviewers] as a very honest, and very nice monologue, very convincing.”

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/08/you-upgrade-your-phone-why-not-your-marriage-the-tv-show-set-to-send-divorce-rates-soaring

Scenes from a Marriage begins in the UK on Sky Atlantic/Now on 11 October - so there might be more posters who are interested in the discussion outlined in the OP.

[Ayeshstar2020]

Let’s hope not

[Ayeshstar2020]

Typical BBC!!!

[Ayeshstar2020]

My bad it’s sky

[wishfuldreamer]

Flipping hell, @Ayeshstar2020, we get it, you don’t like polyamory. Why are you wasting your time on this thread taking part in a discussion you don’t want to have?!

[Bigeggsinapackoften]

@Ayeshstar2020

Let’s hope not

How dare you try to close down discussion like that.

[Boonlark]

Anyway....

I was thinking that poly isn't portrayed very well on screen