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Ask a poly anything.

maquiscat said:
Ah but here is where the difference is, and a key point that I didn't forget to include. Everyone one involved is aware of everyone else, even if they are not holding a relationship directly with some of the others. The difference between poly and cheating is that no one is going behind anyone else back. Now that doesn't mean that everyone is privy to all the details of all the others. For example, if I had a girlfriend outside of my spouses, and I have before, while they know I am with her and how physically active I am with her, they usually don't know what specific activities her and I engage in.

If you are holding extra relationships in secret, then it is not polyamory and it is cheating.
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Oh they were all aware. :pimpdaddy:


I just never thought to label it.
 
WCH said:
So there's no way to talk you out of being a lecher?
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And in what way am I being a lecher? And are you attributing that label to all polys?
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
My main question is why you're so obsessed, honestly. Thread after thread of scrutinzing weird technicalities about your sex and love life. It seems to take up a frankly absurd amount of your daily thoughts.
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Given that what constitutes an "absurd amount" is a subjective value, I can't say it is or isn't.

What are you trying to prove, man?
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Prove? Nothing. Simply answering questions others might have. And many have actual honest questions.

This is part of why I've never gotten involved with the scene. It seems like most of the point is to number off your partners and prove how pomo/kinky/whatever you are. It's more about status and obsession and ego than about any decent conversation about each other as people. I just don't have time for it. And unsurprisingly, I pretty much only seem to date other low-key poly/monogamy neutral people who also have no interaction with the scene and no time for all this posturing.

I just wanna live my life. If connections happen, they happen. That's it.
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I can't help your experiences. I know that our local munches we are talking more about movies and games and sports and very little about the various lifestyles represented. So I don't know how to address that.
 
WCH said:
Basically means you're a sex glutton. You disagree?
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Actually, yes I do. I've actually gotten less sex over the last few years than prior. My cuddle times have increased though. Although the one wife's first husband had called her a nymphomaniac because she wanted sex more than once a quarter. So by that standard I could probably be called a sex glutton. Now some of that lack of sex could just be me slowing down in my old....er age. But given that my husband and I are not sexually active with each other I really doubt sex glutton is appropriate. Poly is for relationship. If I wanted more sex I wouldn't need to be poly. My legal waif was letting me have sex outside the marriage long before we found our current spouses.
 
maquiscat said:
Given that what constitutes an "absurd amount" is a subjective value, I can't say it is or isn't.

Prove? Nothing. Simply answering questions others might have. And many have actual honest questions.

I can't help your experiences. I know that our local munches we are talking more about movies and games and sports and very little about the various lifestyles represented. So I don't know how to address that.
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All this navel-gazing just seems banal to me. It's the same thing as any other relationship really, apart from needing to develop a better-than-standard ability to deal with communicating and interpreting negative emotions (mono people benefit from developing that too, to be honest, but it's easier to get away without it for them). Other than that relatively minor thing that everyone should be doing anyway, there's literally nothing special about it.

It seems like your whole life revolves around alt sexuality stuff. Your whole social group, the majority of what you talk about on here, etc. And that seems pretty common to most people in poly scenes I've met, and most people in any alt sexuality scene in general. Maybe it's my relatively outwardly focused mentality, but it all just seems so tiresome and boring. I don't understand the obsession with it.
 
Stand up and be proud. I am proud to be a lecher.
 
Nothing new about it. It's a Greek/Latin term in use for centuries meaning multiple responsible intimate relationships, simultaneously or not. Earliest reference I could find was in a poem by Dante, "Athena and Her Many Lovers."
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
Nope. I know a poly person who's asexual and hasn't had sex with anyone at all in probably close to a decade.

You're thinking of swinging, which is a completely different thing.
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Okay, how can one be asexual, and "poly" at the same time? Either way, it seems people are always trying to come up with important sounding labels to describe their weird proclivities. I think these people just want attention.
 
countryboy said:
Okay, how can one be asexual, and "poly" at the same time? Either way, it seems people are always trying to come up with important sounding labels to describe their weird proclivities. I think these people just want attention.
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Romantic feelings are a thing. And they don't necessarily require sex.

Even in the mainstream het population, we have couples who don't have sex for one reason or another (age, medical issues, whatever), and they're still perfectly capable of being in love.

I agree a lot of them do. That's why I don't hang out in any of the "scenes." But labels help when trying to sift through mates. Plenty of "mainstream" people use labels for the same purpose -- "outdoorsy," "career-minded," etc.

None of this stuff is new. It's all been around since basically forever.
 
countryboy said:
Okay, how can one be asexual, and "poly" at the same time? Either way, it seems people are always trying to come up with important sounding labels to describe their weird proclivities. I think these people just want attention.
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Asexual simply mean that they hold no sexual attraction towards either gender. Romantic attraction can exist outside of sexual attraction.
 
maquiscat said:
That is a multi layered question, even if you did not realize it.

The first thing is to distinguish the different types of marriage. If you asked couples if they would consider their marriage over if the government's of the US no longer legally recognized their marriage and all legal benefits were gone, most would tell you that they would still be married. So most people consider marriage as something beyond the legal paperwork. In that sense, there are hundreds to thousands of poly marriages across the country currently, and I a man currently in one. I have a husband and two wives.

I am guess that the overall intent was asking about the legal recognition and benefits of poly marriage. There are many in the country who would like to see it come about, most actually. But the biggest dividing line among us deals with whether or not we should pursue it directly currently, or go slowly, making changes to the law to make the addition easier. Unlike adding in same sex marriage, or even theoretically incest marriage, where all you are doing is removing any restrictions to the two person marriage model, the dynamics of a poly marriage would require a lot more thought and planning.

For me personally I am satisfied to wait. That only laws I want to see struck down right now are ones that would try to prevent us living as we wish. For example, out west somewhere, I think Utah, there was a law that basically forced common law marriage on people living together whether there was any legal paperwork to begin with or not. They would apply it to any they felt were living as if married, even if they didn't have the paperwork and then charge them with bigamy, or holding multiple legal marriage statuses. It was determined unconstitutional and entrapment, because the individuals were not seeking that legal status, and the courts said that such a status could not be forced upon such groupings with the intent to charge them. I'll see if I can find the story later.
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So I gather that you figure that marriage can as a concept be stretched enough to work here, though I have my doubts. Have you ever felt that it would help? Would you have liked to have had it? How do you feel about then two married for real are part of the group? Can that ever work?

How much have you thought about marriage being used in , the definition being stretched for, poly relationships?

Or are you simply assuming that it is a good idea?
 
maquiscat said:
Asexual simply mean that they hold no sexual attraction towards either gender. Romantic attraction can exist outside of sexual attraction.
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That's called frustration. "We can be friends." The most hated phrase men hear from women.
 
The Oneidans, of Oneida NY, were a planned society based on a concept of free love. Nothing like the free love of the 60's that most are somewhat conceptually familiar, but an entire different interpretation. They believed everyone in of opposite genders could marry everyone else of opposite genders in the society and enjoy their proclivities in whatever combinations desired at the moment. They also believed all property belonged to all members of the society, all work was for the benefit of the entire society. Other than creating one of America's great still surviving flatware companies (https://www.oneida.com/flatware.html), it failed as a planned society. Tho Karl Mark did study them as one of the many American planned societies of the middle and New England states which helped him form his views of communism.
 
maquiscat said:
So having seen this kind of thread many times, here and in other forums, I thought I would open up the floor for a little Q&A, and discussion. Fire away! And yes I know the haters will be coming out of the woodwork.
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Haven't read through everything but...

Does that mean bisexual as well or is there different shades, like bi sexual poly or hetro poly or something?
 
maquiscat said:
So having seen this kind of thread many times, here and in other forums, I thought I would open up the floor for a little Q&A, and discussion. Fire away! And yes I know the haters will be coming out of the woodwork.
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Do you ever get into disagreements with the other males when it comes to figuring out whose turn it is to force the lid of a jar or remove the spider from the bathroom?
 
soylentgreen said:
Do you ever get into disagreements with the other males when it comes to figuring out whose turn it is to force the lid of a jar or remove the spider from the bathroom?
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:lol:
 
I always wished I could have paired up my wife and favorite gf in a poly relationship under one roof when both were in or near their prime. They are only 5 years apart in age, so even though I dated one 10 years before I met the other in a state that was a 500 miles away, it might have worked out.

But then I come to my senses and quickly realize that they probably would have fallen in love with each other and kill me to get me out of their way.
 
Fishking said:
Haven't read through everything but...

Does that mean bisexual as well or is there different shades, like bi sexual poly or hetro poly or something?
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Polyamory is a chosen relationship style where people may have more than one relationship (or be open to it should it happen), whereas bisexual or hetero is an attractional orientation describing what gender(s) you are naturally attracted to. The two aren't related to each other.

A polyamorous person could have any attractional orientation. Bisexual people are not necessarily polyamorous. Attraction to multiple genders doesn't necessarily mean feeling a need to date people of different genders simultaniously, just as being hetero doesn't necessarily mean you can only be attracted to one person at a time.
 
maquiscat said:
Actually, yes I do. I've actually gotten less sex over the last few years than prior. My cuddle times have increased though. Although the one wife's first husband had called her a nymphomaniac because she wanted sex more than once a quarter. So by that standard I could probably be called a sex glutton. Now some of that lack of sex could just be me slowing down in my old....er age. But given that my husband and I are not sexually active with each other I really doubt sex glutton is appropriate. Poly is for relationship. If I wanted more sex I wouldn't need to be poly. My legal waif was letting me have sex outside the marriage long before we found our current spouses.
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So you have a legal wife, another 'wife' and a husband? Sorry but, that's just way too complicated.
 
WCH said:
So you have a legal wife, another 'wife' and a husband? Sorry but, that's just way too complicated.
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It's ****ing idiotic, is what it is. :roll:
 
Hawkeye10 said:
So I gather that you figure that marriage can as a concept be stretched enough to work here, though I have my doubts. Have you ever felt that it would help? Would you have liked to have had it? How do you feel about then two married for real are part of the group? Can that ever work?
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Marriage as a concept has been all over the place throughout history. Same sex marriages, ghost marriages, incest marriages, and polygamy in all its combinations, as well as monogamy. Various societies have tried to suppress variations they don't like but that does not mean by reverting back to any previously practiced variations we are stretching the concept. Marriage as a legal institution is a recent invention, historically speaking. There was a point in our history where just announcing you were married was enough. Even when the church decided that marriage had to be done under them or it wasn't valid, they didn't keep records that transferred, so anyone could still claim marriage. If you even entertain the idea that a piece of government issued paper is what makes the deciding factor of what a marriage is or isn't then you will probably never have a good marriage.

Yes, it would be nice and helpful if it could be legal as well. My husband's job's insurance is such that trying to get the married plan would cost him over half his paycheck. So it would be good to be able to get the wife that is his legal spouse onto either mine or my legal spouse's insurances, as she suffers from many ailments including migraines and diabetes as well as a bad knee from a car accident many years ago.


How do you feel about then two married for real are part of the group?
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While I can usually figure out what a typo means I am not positive about this one. As to whether it can ever work, it's working now. Will it last? I can ask that same question about any monogamous marriage as well, and the answer will be the same. We'll have to see.

How much have you thought about marriage being used in , the definition being stretched for, poly relationships?

Or are you simply assuming that it is a good idea?
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Again, the definition is not being stretched. Polygamy has been part of the marriage definition for centuries. The church has been mostly successful at trying to suppress that which they don't like or want, but that is constricting the definition, not polygamy stretching it. The very concept of polygamy is a multiple spouse marriage, with polygyny and polyandry being specific sub types. But it is all marriage.

As to good idea or bad idea, well for some, even monogamous marriage is a bad idea. We might say it is good for society but given the divorce rate, one has to wonder. Although one would have to wonder if the cheating rate would fall if more people (not all) were to embrace poly thinking. Instead of having to cheat, they talk about who they have found and want to start a relationship with.
 
OldFatGuy said:
That's called frustration. "We can be friends." The most hated phrase men hear from women.
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The whole we can be friends thing still leaves open that the speaker of the line will be having sex with other. Asexuals simply don't have a sexual attraction for either gender.
 
Fishking said:
Haven't read through everything but...

Does that mean bisexual as well or is there different shades, like bi sexual poly or hetro poly or something?
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Poly does not imply any type of orientation combinations. You could have a straight woman, a bi guy and a gay guy in a poly unit. Even if the woman and gay man are not having sex with each other, they can still love, and even be in love, and be part of a marriage if the unit takes it that far. Certainly you can sub group various types. I would guess my unit would classify as heterosexual poly in that none of us sexually desires our own gender. Well, one wife does, but since the other doesn't it doesn't happen within the marriage.
 
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