CowleyRoad
New member
My wife and I have only very recently started in a polyamorous relationship. We don't have a lot of friends anyway, and the friends we do have are mostly either socially conservative or very religious. So as a result we don't talk to our friends about what we're doing.
We'd hoped that the message board where we met would be a little more understanding. It's a generally left-leaning board politically, and although there aren't many openly poly posters we thought we'd receive a better welcome if we were "out" there. Wow, were we ever wrong. Just as we were thinking of doing so, there were a couple of threads about group marriage and/or polyamory. It's clear that there are a lot of posters who we've known for years and thought were fairly tolerant on other sexual minorities are for some reason extremely anti-poly.
One of the threads discussed a person who'd had a poly relationship some years ago, but later developed a mono relationship with a woman--who went on to cheat him and leave him. People were falling all over themselves to blame the guy because of his earlier poly relationship...a lot of them suggesting that it was his earlier polyamory that let the woman know it was "OK to cheat." There were a lot of nasty things said about polyamory in general, and not a lot of people defending him.
But today a thread went really over the line. It started as a thread about whether it was OK to socialize with someone in a group marriage. You know, because that's such a controversial topic. One usually fairly left-leaning poster started ripping on group marriage, poly, and swinging in general, and came up with this gem:
The upshot of all of this is, as you can imagine, we're not "coming out" on that message board any time soon. And honestly the whole situation has really soured me on being able to talk to anyone (save you guys ) about any topic regarding polyamory.
I guess what I'm asking here is two things. First of all, why are people who are usually tolerant on sexual minorities so anti-poly? You have to realize on this board I'm talking about, if you aren't a supporter of gay marriage, you're all but a pariah, so it's not as if this is some hotbed of social conservatism...and yet the level of anti-polyamory is fairly high. Second, how can you know who to talk to about this? There is one other person on that message board who does know about it...but I wouldn't have spoken to her if I hadn't felt 100% safe that she would keep what I said confidential. Barring that, how can one know that one has a safe haven?
We'd hoped that the message board where we met would be a little more understanding. It's a generally left-leaning board politically, and although there aren't many openly poly posters we thought we'd receive a better welcome if we were "out" there. Wow, were we ever wrong. Just as we were thinking of doing so, there were a couple of threads about group marriage and/or polyamory. It's clear that there are a lot of posters who we've known for years and thought were fairly tolerant on other sexual minorities are for some reason extremely anti-poly.
One of the threads discussed a person who'd had a poly relationship some years ago, but later developed a mono relationship with a woman--who went on to cheat him and leave him. People were falling all over themselves to blame the guy because of his earlier poly relationship...a lot of them suggesting that it was his earlier polyamory that let the woman know it was "OK to cheat." There were a lot of nasty things said about polyamory in general, and not a lot of people defending him.
But today a thread went really over the line. It started as a thread about whether it was OK to socialize with someone in a group marriage. You know, because that's such a controversial topic. One usually fairly left-leaning poster started ripping on group marriage, poly, and swinging in general, and came up with this gem:
(paraphrased so it can't be googled) Women who agree to swinging or polyamory relationships with men are almost always victims of sexual abuse, and men in those relationships are taking advantage of them. Those are very sleazy situations.
The upshot of all of this is, as you can imagine, we're not "coming out" on that message board any time soon. And honestly the whole situation has really soured me on being able to talk to anyone (save you guys ) about any topic regarding polyamory.
I guess what I'm asking here is two things. First of all, why are people who are usually tolerant on sexual minorities so anti-poly? You have to realize on this board I'm talking about, if you aren't a supporter of gay marriage, you're all but a pariah, so it's not as if this is some hotbed of social conservatism...and yet the level of anti-polyamory is fairly high. Second, how can you know who to talk to about this? There is one other person on that message board who does know about it...but I wouldn't have spoken to her if I hadn't felt 100% safe that she would keep what I said confidential. Barring that, how can one know that one has a safe haven?