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[privacy note: all people discussed here are composites of real people; if you are speculating about whom they are composites of, be aware that I’m sluttier than you think I am, even taking into account this caveat.]
[content warning: NSFW, brief mention of BDSM]
[attention conservation notice: queer polyamorous San Franciscan talks about own sex life.]
I.
I think something monogamous people don’t recognize– because their sexual partners almost never overlap, and generally have a fairly large gap between them– is how different the sex is with each person you’re having sex with. If you’re monogamous, it’s easy to imagine that you are a different person with each partner; and, to be fair, that’s true.
But with one partner, yearning, lust, so intense it hurts, that feels like I will burst out of my skin, continually thwarted because they don’t want me as much as I want them. Another partner: kind, friendly, happy sex that half the time results in giggles and “no, I love YOU more” and Eskimo kisses and no orgasms whatsoever. A third: comfortable, familiar, warm, the feeling of someone to come home to. A fourth: a hand around the neck and a whispered “get on your knees, slut” and the way she cracks a smile after she comes.
I sometimes think about all the sexual sides of my partners that I don’t get to see. It’s pretty rude to ask about your metamour’s sex life, and anyway most people can’t put it into words. But still I wonder: does she dom you? does he whisper “oh, fuck” in that wonderful broken voice to you too?
You’d think threesomes would answer this question, but where two-person sex is a relationship between two people, threesomes are a relationship between three; you don’t get to see them unchanged by the observer. But sometimes when you watch them they forget, lost in their own world of each other; and that is something to be here for.
II.
An odd thing about polyamory is that you can have your heart broken, be wanting to punch the wall and throw things and curse every time you hear that bastard’s name mentioned
while simultaneously being bubbly, giggly, happy, full of new relationship energy, tremendously excited by everything about this new person
while simultaneously knowing that your rock is there, your secure base, who will always be there for you if you need them.
I have no idea how to take advice about not getting into rebound relationships.
III.
My life isn’t, honestly, that much different from the average monogamous person’s life. My fiance isn’t dating anyone but me; I have one boyfriend I rarely see and another I go out with occasionally. I can sympathize with the urge that makes people become monogamous. Why put a ton of effort into finding someone you may or may not be compatible with when the default action is to go to bed with someone you already know you love?
But even so the idea of becoming monogamous makes me feel trapped.
The thing about being polyamorous, for me, is that it puts sex on the table. That doesn’t mean that we’ll wind up having sex; a lot of times we don’t. It just means that the option is available if we want to.
Having sex and romance as options allows me to be more honest with my feelings. As a monogamous person, I was continually anxious about crossing the invisible line between an innocent crush and something my partner would consider a betrayal, and it hurt to have those feelings I couldn’t do anything with. As a poly person, I can just… have the feelings, and tell people I have them, and allow my relationship with the person to be colored by those feelings (even if they are not returned, which does happen).
I have an order of magnitude more ambiguously romantic/sexual relationships than I do actual romantic/sexual relationships: the Tumblr mutual who sends me nudes; the Tumblr mutual I have a vast pining crush on; the friend I’ve had sex with once or twice, and might again; the long-distance friend I hook up with whenever we’re in the same location; the person I flirt with and maybe someday will be sexual with, but if not I still appreciate the flirting; the friend I used to date. All these relationships are only possible with polyamory.
I get that this could be really off-putting for a lot of people. I know some people who became monogamous and breathed a sigh of relief because they were out of the dating game, who appreciated how their interactions are desexualized by the simple sentence “I have a boyfriend”.
I think, for me, it comes from a place of deep distrust in eros. On a very fundamental level, I don’t like eros. It is jealous, possessive, but far more it is arbitrary: a slow smile, the way a hand moves, a quirk of punctuation, and suddenly you are the most important person and I would do anything to be with you. Eros is most decidedly not the aesthetic.
So I find that my relationships are primarily based around philia, the recognition of soul and soul; and I use eros as a tool to deepen philia, rather than as an end in itself.
IV.
It is very easy to wind up socializing only within your poly network. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been at a party talking to people and the group I ended up hanging out with was my boyfriend, my other boyfriend, his wife, his girlfriend, and her boyfriend.
I don’t think this is a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s definitely a thing.
V.
I have not been without a primary since I started being polyamorous. When a relationship with one primary ended, I had another person, waiting in the wings. (And that is not counting the people whom, for whatever reason, I didn’t end up leaving my current primary for.)
Perhaps this is a flaw on my part: an inability to commit, a fear of ending a relationship without a replacement already prepared. Perhaps this is sensible and practical: it can take years to determine whether someone is suitable to be your life partner; it is more efficient to screen your dating pool and do early-stage testing of potential partners at the same time that you’re doing late-stage testing of your current best candidate. (I am engaged at a rather young age.)
I do wonder how this will affect my primary relationship now that I am engaged. If I were a polyamorous person who believed in maximizing autonomy, I would switch primaries whenever I found one I liked better; but if I continue my current habit of switching primaries every few years, I would never get to build a life with anyone, even though this has been my dearest desire for years. If we live in a tremendously convenient universe, committing to one life partner means that I will no longer have the desire to share my life with anyone else; however, it is rarely safe to bet on the universe being convenient.
I worry that the answer is that I will wind up shutting down the desire to have primary relationships with other people, in the same way that in a monogamous relationship I would have to shut down the desire to fall in love with other people; it felt dishonest then, and I don’t know if it would feel much better now. Perhaps I will no longer date people who don’t have primaries themselves. Who knows.
VI.
A lot of the advice about how to be polyamorous talks about creating rules: either creating rules to protect your primary relationship, or the dire fate that will happen to you if you create rules to protect your primary relationship. If you judge from the polyamory advice books, people are constantly making rules about everything: sleeping over, falling in love, particular sex acts, whether you can go out to particular restaurants with certain people, vetoes.
This is very alien to my polyamory experience. I genuinely have no idea if any of my partners have rules or not; if they have, it hasn’t come up.
The problem is that poly networks organically develop their own rules. When I see someone cute at a party, I can make certain assumptions about what I can and can’t do with them: they probably don’t have to check with their primary before they go home with me; I will not be secret from their other partners, but they will not make any especial effort to have me meet them; I do not have to get along with their other partners, but I do have to be cordial and avoid starting drama; we use condoms for PIV sex and anal, but probably not for blowjobs, and no one uses dental dams; we don’t have to swap STI test results before sex, but if it becomes a regular thing I can expect to be sent a copy.
It isn’t like those are the only norms a poly network can develop. I’ve met people whose network had a very strong “don’t hook up without swapping test results first” norm. I’ve been part of a network where it was totally okay to start shit with your metamours. Presumably there are poly networks where people always have to check with their primaries before going home with a new person, on account of people keep writing books about them.
You can buck the local social norms: no one will stop you from keeping your secondary partners secret from your primary. But it’s kind of like swimming upstream. Some of your potential partners will be weirded out by not getting to meet your primary. If you fail to adequately brief your new secondary, he may very well go up to your primary and say “hi! I’m your girlfriend’s new boyfriend!” You don’t get to rely on social norms to do your negotiation for you. It’s harder, and so I think people slip into doing what the rest of their network is doing.
VII.
I’ve noticed being poly takes the urgency out of crushes.
So I like her. Well, I’ll probably get a chance to hit on her eventually, if not this party then the next, if not this year then the next. When you’re monogamous, if you don’t hit on her RIGHT NOW, she might find someone else, and then you’re shit out of luck for even a hookup. But with polyamory, she already has a few someone elses. It’s not like either of us is going anywhere. There’s no real reason to rush. I know people I’ve been meaning to ask out for almost a year, and it hasn’t happened yet. Eh. Someday.
Ampersand said:
I feel that this: “be aware that I’m sluttier than you think I am, even taking into account this caveat” – creates a virtuous cycle that will only increase your sluttitude, as in each round I take account of the caveat, upping my impression of your sluttitudosity, but the caveat must then be considered again leading to a further upranking of your sluttitudeness, until an infinite loop of ever-increasing sluttiness has been created, a perfect engine, and we all win big science prizes.
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davidmikesimon said:
Hofstadter’s Sexy Law?
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Taymon A. Beal said:
Obligatory link to my own blog post about this.
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viviennemarks said:
Huh. As a (VERY VERY NONCENTRAL) Obligate Mono person, some of this was quite relatable, actually.
I don’t like eros either. Or NRE. The love I like best is philia, and I utterly loathe crushes. My ideal partnership would grow seamlessly out of friendship, with no period of heart-beats-faster infatuation or anything. Sadly, I know myself, and I don’t think this is possible. That said, not long ago, I literally had a conversation with a friend that began “HELP! I’M EXPERIENCING AN EMOTION!” “Oh, that sounds bad, come over, I have Prosecco.”
Although why can’t mono people have friends they used to date? Most of my monogamous friends have friends they used to date, or hooked up with once, or whatever. I think you may be over-estimating exactly HOW monogamous most mono people are generally: many people consider themselves monogamous, but might still have an fwb when they’re single, or date multiple people before becoming exclusive with one. Either that, or I’m even more noncentral than I thought.
Also, possible solution to wanting multiple life partners: live in a compound?
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sniffnoy said:
I think local monogamy norms vary more than most people realize.
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skye said:
“It’s pretty rude to ask about your metamour’s sex life”
…it is? Well, fuck.
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ozymandias said:
In my poly network! Different poly networks have different norms!
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callmebrotherg said:
Parts of this sounded like a kind of poetry, especially in the first half. I like.
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Lambert said:
Can anyone explain what exactly a secondary relationship is like? How accurate is my mental model of ‘the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a man and a woman’ but with less heteronormativity & more sex?
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mayleaf said:
Ozy wrote about this earlier! https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/secondary-partnerships/
There are probably many different types of secondary relationships, but the central examples I’ve seen look a lot like mono dating between people who haven’t become extremely close or committed yet. You enjoy going on dates together, spending time talking and getting to know each other, having sex, and such. You care a lot about each other, and while you may not be the *first* person they’d call if they needed help, you’d be up there, and you’d want to help out if you could.
As Ozy points out, one of the main differences between primary and secondary relationships is that secondary relationships aren’t on the “relationship escalator”. Primary partners (and monogamous partners) generally try to grow closer and more involved in each other’s lives over time, perhaps ideally leading to marriage. A secondary relationship, on the other hand, can find an ideal level of closeness and commitment that works for both people, and then just stay there.
Conventional friendships work a lot like secondary relationships — you can settle into a steady, stable equilibrium of “get dinner together every week or two”, instead of constantly trying to escalate commitment beyond that. With friendships, it’s not seen as a failing — it’s understood that you can be a good and important part of someone’s life without being maximally committed to them, and no one questions whether you really care about your friends just because you don’t want to live with them or have kids with them. Conventional romantic relationships, on the other hand, are supposed to be on the relationship escalator — people are advised to break up with their romantic partners if they don’t think the relationships is “going anywhere”. But a lot of people find that they *can* care about a romantic partner without being maximally committed to them, and so they have secondary relationships.
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Rachael said:
Re your second paragraph, I disagree that you necessarily need multiple partners in order to experience that kind of sexual variety.
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LTP said:
Wait, is your entire social cirlce poly people? Because that is what it kinda sounds like to me. If so, how did you manage that?
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mayleaf said:
Our entire social circle is almost entirely poly people, to the point where I generally assume new acquaintances in my circle are poly until they specify otherwise.
…I don’t know how poly spread through the rationalist-sphere in the way that it did, but I don’t think we’re unique — I know of other almost-exclusively-poly social circles.
And it does make sense for poly people to hang out with other poly people.
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itsabeast said:
Since the rationalist-sphere skews male, does that mean the rationalist poly networks also skew male?
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L said:
But seriously the not-even-explictly-spoken assumption that of course everyone has zero or one primary, if you have a primary you’re not available for other primary relationships, is weird. Everyone does that so I’m not gonna fight it, “I’m polyamorous” now officially means “I share my life with one person or no one at all, and I enjoy having the freedom to develop less intense relationships”, and the rest of us can go find other words.
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awildstorm said:
Not all poly person follow hierarchy. I have no primary.
I have a boyfriend whom also had no primary, and a boyfriend who does have a primary. We see ourselves as “sharing” our lives with each other. In some cases this includes metamours, but not always. Or at least not all metas will I be comfortable sharing life with.
In my case my guys would like us all to live close together. Some times we talk of a shared home, some times we talk of houses across the street from each other. In either option metas would also live with our be closer, or possibly just visit frequently.
A different poly structure, however I see the poly style Ozy has and fully understand them.
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Ooh said:
This was genuinely nice to read
Partially because ooh it’s sexy Ozy’s cool sex life but also because like
It’s ratifying for my own polyamorous feelings to know that the things I envision aren’t Alien Impossible Concepts and that (at least one person) is making it work
Lovely 🙂
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Oversharing ∴ Pseudonymous said:
So, um, here’s a data point for anybody who read this paragraph…
…and fell head-first into the typical mind fallacy:
I first read this post when Ozy published it, and the text above the quoted paragraph—starting with “The thing about being polyamorous, for me, is that it puts sex on the table”—had me in such a shallow-breath, fast-pulse, inner-monologue-one-continuous-scream state of “really off-putting” that I am only now re-reading and discovering the quoted paragraph is there…
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