Insight required - if your partner had another partner, what would your feelings be?

[Downinthebottomofthegarden]

I'd appreciate any insight or advice with regards to a strange scenario.

Try and imagine your partner also had another partner. Not an affair, or secret fling, but someone who they'd been close to for a long time. I guess what could be described as a polygamous relationship.

How do you think your feelings towards your partner would be? Would you still love them the same? Would you still feel as close to them? Do you think it'd be possible for you to love them in the same way as you do now, given that they'd be sharing their love, energy, time with someone else that they love.

I wouldn't want a relationship like this at all.

Can't get my head around polyamory at all. To me the definition of a relationship is exclusivity. If you aren't exclusive you aren't in a relationship (the way I see it) you just have a FWB.

However I know these arrangements work very well for some people. I think it really depends on your personal outlook, your definition of a relationship and jealousy.

I struggle with jealousy - for me feeling like I’m special to my OH is what it’s all about. One of the hardest things in my previous relationship with XDP was having to share him with his DCs, seeing his face light up when he looked at one of them, having him cancel plans with me because they wanted him there or having them constantly calling him because they were bored, lonely, wanted money etc it was just such an imposition on our time together. Maybe because we only spent 3 nights together a week anyway and they got the other 4, my time felt like it was compromised already. If that had been another woman and I’d known that he would be sharing not only his time and attention but his body and intimacy with her, I’d have lasted about 5 minutes. I’d be constantly comparing what I was getting with what he gave to the other woman, feeling short changed and hard done by. I’d be miserable.

The series Sister Wives is extremely interesting. Before anyone turns up their noses at an American reality TV, do give it a go. The premise when it started was to show a functioning polygamous family, not a shit show of victim wives. And, it has now been running for 12 years so it's a fascinating longitudinal study of how this can work.

I am absolutely not personally interested in polyamory or polygamy and before I started watching the series I assumed the women would all be religious oddball, surrendered wives. In fact the women are all smart, funny and functioning. At the start, each of the 4 women had their own home in a cul de sac of houses they all shared. Two of the women worked full time and the other two brought up the children. While the children were little this seemed to work really, really well. The women who worked had 24 hour childcare and the women who stayed at home had the pooled income of their husband and the other wives. For the children it was a fabulous way to grow up.

Cracks started appearing as the children grew up and the relationships were no longer mainly about bringing up children. Also, just recently one wife has left and the others are increasingly unhappy. After 12 years they are beginning to say how they have really felt over the years. Basically they have all struggled with it but pretended not to. I guess there was pressure to pretend because the TV show had become their main source of income.

I think the same can happen in polyamorous relationships too. You start off in your 20s and 30s thinking it sounds great and that you are cool to be doing it and you end up miserable but pretending you're not because it's become part of your social capital/ cool identity.

I'd be fine with it but then I am not into monogamy. Sometimes these things work out great for all concerned; sometimes they work more for some people than for others... and sometimes, if one of the people involved is working to an agenda of their own, it can all go horribly wrong.
Perhaps the most sensible way to look at it is: if you have more than one child, you sometimes spend time with each of your children individually and you should do your best to be fair about this (eg older child may spend time doing an activity with you that the younger child couldn't manage etc) and no one who isn't very strange thinks that having more than one DC is 'cheating' on your firstborn.

When it comes to sexual/romantic relationships it's worth thinking a bit about whether you are actually into monogamy yourself or whether you are just going along with the conventional view that it's the right/proper or only way to conduct relationships. It isn't 'natural' in the least and was mainly imposed to benefit men more than women. (This doesn't make it a bad thing if it's what you feel is best for you, of course, just that it doesn't suit everyone and a great deal of harm is done by trying to enforce it on those who are not into it.)

I'd want another partner too! I don't think it would end well.

I could not be in a thrupple.
I'd end the relationship.

Posted too soon.

If I lost my mind and decided to stay I'd feel really sad. Very unhappy, jealous and I'd likely become very depressed.

And I would not feel loved by them. All I would think would be why am I not enough.

I personally couldn’t be in an open relationship but some people can. I would not get involved with someone who was already in a relationship.

I have a friend who is married to a guy. She then got a girlfriend who is now with both her and her husband. They are like a throuple. Now she told me she has a boyfriend as well. The boyfriend has his own partner, a girlfriend. I don't think my friend and the boyfriend's girlfriend are together though. Very open about it all on social media etc.

I think for some people it can work, people who have a different mindset to people such as myself. I, personally, could not do that. I love that my husband and I share our own bond which is for no one else but us.

I think the whole idea of it is a ridiculous load of rubbish and wouldn't even contemplate it.

A dealbreaker for me.

Imagine the emotional effort involved in maintaining multiple relationships.

I don't have time for that shit

Hell would freeze over before I'd share my DH. There is absolutely no fucking way, there isn't a single shred of my being that could ever or would ever accept a situation like that - to me that would be a total horror story. Total monogamy and commitment required - that is it, end of. If I can't have that then they can't have me.

my biggest issue in my relationship as a parent is that dh and i don't get enough time together as a couple to go out / chill out / do stuff / just 'be' together as a couple outside of work and parenting.
so if he wanted to half that time with me by giving half of it to somebody else i'd be beyond jealous.

@SquidWord

I have a friend who is married to a guy. She then got a girlfriend who is now with both her and her husband. They are like a throuple. Now she told me she has a boyfriend as well. The boyfriend has his own partner, a girlfriend. I don't think my friend and the boyfriend's girlfriend are together though. Very open about it all on social media etc.

I think for some people it can work, people who have a different mindset to people such as myself. I, personally, could not do that. I love that my husband and I share our own bond which is for no one else but us.

where on earth do they find the time???!!!

It wouldn’t be for me. I can imagine being stuck with the domestic downsides while DP flitted seamlessly between settings and partners, “having it all”. I’m also that any such DP would, in turn, give me the courtesy and freedom to do the same, thereby making it all about them doing what they want when they want.

@museumum my friend works part time so maybe that helps 😂

I agree with others that love in all its forms platonic/ non romantic is not finite and can expand, as it does when more children come along. I don't think that applies to "in love", which even when all the chemical/hormone/romance madness dies down, is IMO an exclusive state. If (hypothetically) my partner wanted to introduce someone else, I would know that they were not in love with me and I would suspect they now had that feeling for the other person. It wouldn't be happening, anyway, as I'd be saying "Bye bye".

I have a husband, a long term lover and two to three casual/exciting fwbs. My husband has similar. It work so well for us. A million times better than when you fancy other people in your head and can't tell your partner about it. Plus it takes the forbidden naughtiness out of sex so you can just have nice, real, honest relationships. There is a lot of useful thinking in the poly literature about how to explore your own feelings of jealousy and so on, and I have really grown as a person since we opened our marriage.

@D0lphine

Imagine the emotional effort involved in maintaining multiple relationships.

I don't have time for that shit

God me too. Exhausting

It is a bit tiring. But you don't spend your whole time with anyone, it's all quite spread out.

Surely you’re just living a promiscuous lifestyle and shagging whoever you want whenever you want.

It’s madness to dress it up as having multiple “partners” other than that the term partner is used in a different context.

Essentially, someone in an open relationship is just sexually promiscuous. Nothing wrong with that if that’s your thing, but people who think that their husband who has multiple partners is actually just their husband and in love with them are kidding themselves.

Open relationships are just a green light to shag around without it being considered as cheating.

It’s also IMO a part of a misogynist society.

These cultures and sects who permit polygamous relationships only do so on the basis the man can have multiple wives. The concept behind it makes sense because many women wouldn’t be able to survive were they not a part of a marriage in olden times, plus from a genetic perspective it would be known who was the father of the children.

But it’s still the case that it’s the man who makes the decisions, and the women who have to be content with whatever attention he chooses to give them.

Mind you I can’t imagine any woman in their right mind would want more than one husband 😂.

No I couldn’t, I use to think I could but in the stark light of reality big no.