 |
| Polyamory |
Polyamory, in my opinion, is simply loving more than one
person; that is having a deep and meaningful relationship with several people
at one time. Of course you can be single and indentify as poly. Polyamory is
open to all genders and sexualities.
You may ask is it cheating? Well not if everybody is open
and honest and knows about everybody else. Of course it’s nice if everybody is
at least friends, but hey, life doesn’t always work that way. I’ll repeat again
open and honest communication is where it’s at.
Some people have what they call ‘open relationships’ some of
these can be the same as being poly. Others go for a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
policy, which is of course fine if it works for you, but is not my thing. Some
people set gender boundaries, such as you can only date other women.
Other common forms of non-monogamy include swinging, which
is just casual sex without a deeper romantic relationship. Then there’s
‘friends with benefits’, where you have a sexual relationship with a close
friend, but aren’t dating.
Then there are straight couples who are looking for that
ideal bisexual woman, who will love them both equally and stay within that
triad. These are comically known as ‘unicorn hunters’. Rare but works for some.
As you can possibly no doubt imagine, there are many
variations on the above and there is no way I can cover all forms of
polyamorous and non-monogamous relationship in this one brief article; although
I may come back to the subject in future blogs.
My own experiences of polyamory are as follows. I have been
with my partner G for nearly 15 years, we had talked about becoming poly
several times over the course of our relationship. Then several years ago we
took the decision to open up our partnership. We set a few ground rules, such
as by the second date we should have met the new person and no sex until that
point. As primary partners we would have some veto over who the other person
sees; this has only happened once so far. These rules are by no means the same for all poly people.
Currently I am seeing G and my girlfriend S. G is seeing J,
and also dating/friends with benefits with a few other people, as am I. S is
also seeing E (who is also seeing M, who is monogamous but poly friendly). I
think that sums it up? Yes it can get complicated and the hardest thing about being poly can be scheduling, organizing when sees who when, and getting some time by yourself.
We deal with jealously as it comes along. I believe it is
caused by insecurity and I find that a good long talk about your issues followed
by lots of cuddles helps. Once you get used to however polyamory works for you,
a strange happy feeling starts to take over when you know your partner is truly
happy with one of their other partners.
Poly society is very loosely formed, as most people in
non-monogamous relationships don’t go out of their way to connect with others.
But over the last decade poly people have been more likely to come out, poly
families have been featured in the press and even the odd famous person has
come out
as poly such as Tilda Swinton.
Poly and the LGBT community have formed links too, also many people who identify themselves as queer or asexual fit into the poly spectrum. I am not too sure why this is, but presumably if you already have to come out once and indentify beyond the supposed mainstream, being open about your poly identity is a little easier.
So that is a brief overview of what being poly means to me. Next
week I will talk a little more about the kinky side of my life.
Links and Resources
Polytical http://polytical.org/
Poly Forum http://www.polyamory.com/forum/
UK Poly Mailing List http://bi.org/uk-poly/
Open Fidelity Guide http://openfidelity.info/p/OpenFidelityAZGuide.pdf
Poly in Pictures http://www.polyinpictures.com/2010/10/01/introduction/
Follow @FRW
