What are your experiences with polyamory, first or second hand?

I personally am in a phenomenally stable polyamorous relationship. I’ve been married to my wife for 12 years, and she has had the same boyfriend for about half of that time. It’s a really fulfilling arrangement for all of us in various ways. We’re all genuinely happy and satisfied. I’m kind of casually looking for a boyfriend of my own.

But I feel like I only hear negative stories about other poly experiences. It’s always unstable people and situations. It’s always two out of three people happy at most. Surely there are other success stories out there, and I just hear the disasters because they’re more memorable and fun to tell. Does anyone else have or know a polyamory success story?

EDIT: This blew up a little while I was asleep. I promise I’m at least reading every comment.

EDIT 2.0: ngl I did not expect the trope of polyamory to fix a struggling relationship would be so real. We did just the opposite and are both baffled. Don’t use volitility to fight the volitility.

DingusKhan,

It caused way too much drama.

KISSmyOS,

I dated a woman who was polyamorous and I was fine with it.
When she found someone else she was also interested in, she asked me if that was an issue, but I was still fine with it.
The other guy wasn’t fine with it.
She chose to stay with him and dumped me.

morphballganon,

Sounds like she wasn’t really polyamorous. She was just dating around.

____,

That sounds like someone who was exploring, and I offer my sympathy / empathy.

Poly is a choice. Handling disagreement/drama is a choice. Hell, which issues I choose to lose my mind over is a choice.

My model is disclosure and honesty, unfortunately, not everyone behaves that way / is sincere.

I sincerely hope that you’ve found the right types of connections for you and yours.

Hugin,

I’ve been in a polyamorous relationship with my wife for 23 years. We started poly and still are. Not counting relationships that lasted a date or two she has had three relationships that lasted between Hall a year and a year and a half. I’ve had one long term that lasted eight years.

We aren’t the jealous types so it’s been mostly good with the normal relationship ups and downs combined with the elevated logistical problems that are inherent in poly relationships.

Fori us it’s great and we wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll also say there is nothing like waking up on the weekend to the sound of your wife and girlfriend laughing in the kitchen while having coffee.

CaptPretentious,

I worked with a married couple many years back. Then they had a kid. So they split their shifts since daycare costs to damn much for 2 Perkins cooks. So they very little of each other. So they went to an open relationship model because “needs”. One of the male managers known for hitting in and fucking all waitresses (because he controlled their schedule…) took the opportunity to start plowing her too. The husband… Thought he had game and thought he could get someone at work. He couldn’t. So that had to be a fun dynamic. The husband and wife’s manager working side by side with both of them and the manager was having a baby with one of his other conquests that also work there. Their marriage quickly fell apart and people’s opinion of her and the manager and the husband took a leap off a cliff. Before all of that they were a very happy couple and great friends to be with. Afterwards they were all insufferable and the child pays for all this.

Knew another couple, married, with for kids. They moved to a open relationship model… Probably for plethora of reasons, Part of me believes that she misses her early twenties party girl that she used to be. Turns out being in mid-30s and having four kids and being married really limits the type of guys that you get. Her former husband moved on with life. And she now has a fifth kid with someone that was a temp boyfriend.

tjhart85,
@tjhart85@kbin.social avatar

My wife and I have been poly for going on a decade now and my girlfriend has been part of the equation since damn near the beginning.

My wife, girlfriend & I all jointly own our home together and things have been great!

I (male, cis-het) don't date outside the two of them (I don't have that kind of time!) ... both of the ladies have other partners though, mostly with the goal of them being long term, but like most relationships (poly or mono) they generally fizzle out for one reason or another. Wife has a partner that's been pretty stable for almost a year though and girlfriend has a LDR that's been strong for 5ish years.

We've all "come out" to our family and friends long ago, mostly with no blowback. I am not close with people at my current job, so they don't know, but, I also use the words 'wife' and 'girlfriend' so if they haven't picked up on it, it's not because I'm omitting, I'm just not telling people that don't need to know about my personal life the specifics about my personal life.

If you were to judge monogamy by the shit that pops up in relationship advice threads, people would have a bad impression of it as well!

____,

If you were to judge monogamy by the shit that pops up in relationship advice threads, people would have a bad impression of it as well!

That’s the truth.

My day job is FinTech/tax adjacent, so I have to give you collectively (and your collective web of relationships) credit for making the home ownership work. The overwhelming majority of humans can’t make tenants in common between two people work.

Personally, I’'m not particularly close with my family for other reasons, so being ‘out’ isn’t a real concern - given a wife and girlfriend in that long-term context, I’d write the requisite will / medical POA to be fair, and to ensure that blood relatives aren’t executing either.

I’m somewhat close with folks at work, but I WFH for a company that’s fairly progressive. One of the people I started with recently asked us to address them in a specific way, and I couldn’t be happier for them. If I called my boss “Joe,” and they asked me to call them “Mr. Smith”, that’s no different.

I very much like your strategy of “truthful but no obvious” There isn’t a need at work for a full-fledged explanation of my home life, but I also work with good people who don’t blink at the miscellaneous terms I (or they) use to describe the people who are important to us. That’s how it’s supposed to work - we all share what we feel comfortable with, and other people share in our joys/sorrows regarding the same. Only the level of detail changes, really.

Wiz,

I’m curious about the sleeping arrangement. Do you sleep in the same bed with one more than the other? Or different beds? No judgment, just curious.

tjhart85,
@tjhart85@kbin.social avatar

I switch between the two beds. We'll occasionally all pile into one King size bed, but, at least one person doesn't get a good night's sleep when we do, so, it's not an all the time kind of thing for us.

morphballganon,

I’ve been poly for over a decade. Met my now-wife at a poly event.

Other partners have come and gone for each of us.

A lot of people like to blame non-monogamy for issues between individuals, but, like, if some people can make poly work, that tells me whatever issues were likely caused by problematic individuals, not by polyamory.

____,

Thanks for the input - I agree that poly isn’t the problem, people are the problem.

This particular person had to learn the hard way how to say ‘I love you, I will not leave you, and with that in mind, I’d like to fuck _____’ More difficult than it seems, but hardly a torpedo to the relationship - barring a random announcement out of nowhere.

____,

Married 13 yrs as of the end of October. We’ve played with others, and have standing permission to “get things going,” but I find the wedding ring to (understandably) be a turnoff. My personal preferences mean that it’s difficult to meet people I’m interested in and who are likely to believe any reasonable explanation for ‘even though I’m wearing a ring, we are all on the same page.’

It is by definition much easier for my wife / both of us, to find a man who is both interested and dealing in good faith than for me to approach a woman successfully.

I don’t harbor any jealousy or concern with regards to my wife, she simply has an easier time with it. One can blame that on the lies that cheating men have told over many centuries, I’m sure.

I’ve encountered a number of women in whom I’d be interested, but… I refuse to take my ring off just to have a chance at meeting someone. Not just because “reasons” and “ethics,” but also because I know for a fact that up-front disclosure is the better path.

“No, I wasn’t wearing a ring when I met you, but I’m married,” is not the way to start off a poly relationship from where I sit. It is, however, an excellent way to scare off the folks who are open to the same.

Neither of us is looking for threesomes per se, and neither of us is willing to dissemble and then later ask forgiveness of the third party.

Haven’t posted all that much on the topic, so… Fuckit. We’ve been married for almost fifteen years. We found a play partner around the five-year mark. That lasted as long as it lasted, and was a great deal of fun - both in person and via internet, subject to collective needs. That person could have handled things better, and I could have handled their less than ideal behavior better. I own my part, there. It wasn’t intended to be long term, and that’s fine - it introduced us to both the lifestyle and the risks, and I am cognizant of what I did right and what I did wrong at the tine.

We’re in a more liberal town than where we spent much of our marriage, but it’s still tough to meet people. Some of that is due to my WFH arrangement, as I don’t get out as much as ‘normal’ folks, but I would absolutely not sleep with someone I worked with anyway - I’m a professional, it has the potential to get really ugly, and could very well ruin my reputation.

Dating sites have proven unhelpful, though much of that was while living in “Kettlecorn, KS” where my wife grew up. Trying to do this in the midwest is ‘hard mode’ to say the least.

I’m not even looking for women a fraction of my age (and I’m not that damn old to begin with), but any introduction brings with it the risk of judgement / ‘If you weren’t married…’

I consider it a damn shame that consensual poly is not more mainstream - people will meet people, and have chemistry, and have sex as a result. Advance consent, in whatever form the couple finds appropriate, prevents literally all of the unpleasantness, feelings of betrayal, etc.

Not an expert at this stuff, but also fairly sure my experience is not incredibly outside the norm.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I know of two couples that dabble in it to some extent. One as far as I know is unicorn-hunting, because their rules for it suggest a 3rd member genuinely capturing someone’s heart would lead to relationship implosion of epic proportions, and I suspect that couple isn’t mature or stable enough to be doing what they’re doing without leaving people open for hurt. Not that I have any say in it, lol. But I feel sorry for any thirds that interact with them thinking there’s even a chance of them being an equal partner.

The other couple has much better communication skills, and claim they’re poly, but as far as I can tell from the outside “poly” has happened as an attempt to save the marriage. Maybe they’ll make it work, but I’ve watched them make some dumb mistakes, and the wife has jealous behaviors when women interact with the husband and a history of bending to his needs before her own so I think even if she says they’re poly she might have talked herself into it as a way to attend to him.

I think healthy poly is possible–but it requires extremely mature individuals with exceptional communication skills, and that’s rare even in monogamous couples.

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