Why is it so Bad?

I don't get how friends are any different than partners. It's not like they're dating your kid. No matter what the relationship to you, they're just "someone who comes over sometimes" I don't understand why you would have higher standards with respect to meeting your kids for partners over friends.

I also don't understand why you wouldn't want your kids to see what happy, healthy romantic relationships look like.

Or what if you date someone for like two years and then finally decide, OK this is someone I want to be with for the long term, it's time to introduce them to my kid... and then their personalities completely clash, not because your partner is a bad person or you didn't do a good enough job making sure they're stable and reliable... but just because not everyone gets along with everyone. So what then, you've invested all this time and energy and you're just going to say "see ya, my kid is #1 and my needs don't matter" or you're going to force your kid to get over it or you're going to keep seeing them out of the house, so that you never really have the kind of relationship you really want.

*shrug* I just don't believe in sheltering kids from reality. That's naive. That doesn't mean I believe in going out of your way to expose them to pain and suffering just to prove a point. That's sadistic. The middle ground is to just let life happen. It's going to anyway, why try to stop the inevitable?

Of course, at the end of the day, it's the choice of the individual parent and you have to do what's right for you and what is, to the best of your knowledge, best for your particular kid. Sometimes you'll get it wrong, hey you're only human right?
 
LR... I'm curious... you've said in the past that, because your family always does everything together, that your new partners have to be comfortable coming over and participating in that lifestyle. At the same time, you're saying that you guys have to get to know people outside the house because of potential trauma. I'm having trouble understanding these seemingly mutually exclusive approaches.
 
I cant stop friends and family dying or moving away. That's normal, unavoidable stuff. I can avoid my son hhaving to deal with that more than he has to by introducing him to temps as a trial run for later. A few .weeks isn't long enough to know how temp they are.

This is your kids. You get one shot at it. Surely your heart and genitals can wait.
 
I don't get how friends are any different than partners. It's not like they're dating your kid. No matter what the relationship to you, they're just "someone who comes over sometimes" I don't understand why you would have higher standards with respect to meeting your kids for partners over friends.

My friends are people Ive known longer than my son has been alive. Anyone I meet is subject to the same criteria. Female potential friend or male potential partner.
 
Reality isn't parent having multiple relationships for most people. And yes, my son comes first every time. Regardless of what I want.
 
Schroeding-
We get to know people by inviting them to participate in larger group activities, or meet at the park. Activities where the kids can play but its not "intimate family atmosphere".
We also do all have the opportunity to go out alone to meet people, once a week.
But the key difference is that a person has to be comfortable with getting to know us in these "family friendly" group atmospheres or their time with us is severely limited.
And
We don extend invites for family times until we have established a friendship in the group setting.
 
Schroeding-
We get to know people by inviting them to participate in larger group activities, or meet at the park. Activities where the kids can play but its not "intimate family atmosphere".
We also do all have the opportunity to go out alone to meet people, once a week.
But the key difference is that a person has to be comfortable with getting to know us in these "family friendly" group atmospheres or their time with us is severely limited.
And
We don extend invites for family times until we have established a friendship in the group setting.

I think that's a great method, but, honestly, my partner doesn't have time for large group activities. Plus, it wouldn't be fair of him to ask me, or anyone else, to go to them. I have my own life, I'm busy, and I don't have time to hang out at his kids' birthday parties or high school friends' picnics where all the kids are running around in the park. I'd feel weird, anyway, being surrounded by a bunch of older, married couples. There are social events he and I attend, but not kid friendly.
 
This isn't how I do things but it's certainly preferable to bringing your date over to hang out whilst you parent. It's better for the kids, just not ideal for the adults imo.
 
Last edited:
No, the way LR handles things means that the new potential date has to hang out with their potential date who they don't know very well, plus several members of their family and friends. That's not something I'd want to do in the early days of dating someone. I like the early days to be impulsive and fun with lots of spontaneous sex. That's not going to happen during a family barbeque. Also, I wouldn't be comfortable with the potential date meeting my son at that time so I wouldn't want to meet his kid(s). Too soon to get kids involved.

My solution to this is for the adults to acknowledge that they've agreed to a poly relationship and manage their parenting and partner duties in a way that allows them to be poly and develop relationships with others. In order to do this in a way that permits the potential couple to have the best chance of bonding and having a stable and healthy attachment and protects any minors from being negatively affected by temporary and/or unstable relationships, it means supporting your co parents in having time away from the family to form adult relationships without guilt tripping them.

Some people decide to put poly on hold whilst they have a young and growing family. I completely understand that decision but that should go for everyone. If there isn't time or resources for everyone to have more than one relationship because of the family needs, nobody should have more than one relationship. It shouldn't be that one person gets to enjoy polyamory whilst the other(s) are restricted by parental and partner duties. Make realistic room for everyone to be poly, or nobody is.
 
Last edited:
Ideal is relative, subjective. Your language implies that it's absolute, objective. What's ideal for one person is nightmarish for another. Try to remember that you are not everyone and just because someone's lifestyle makes your own skin crawl, doesn't mean it isn't 100% perfect for all the people involved.

For example, I like to get to know someone BEFORE having sex. It's not part of my "early days" dating process. Meeting someone at a family bbq would be fun for me, because I know there would be fun and games, taking the pressure off awkward chit chat. And then there's food! And, since I don't like having sex with people I don't know very well, I could be guaranteed that at a family bbq, it wouldn't even be a remote issue.

I'm not big on spontaneity. I like to plan my life and know what to expect. I like predictability. Your "ideal" sounds awful to me.

That's why I really hate it when you speak in absolutes, as though your way is the best way for everyone, rather than being what it is: what's best for you personally.
 
Last edited:
Ideal is relative, subjective. Your language implies that it's absolute, objective. What's ideal for one person is nightmarish for another. Try to remember that you are not everyone and just because someone's lifestyle makes your own skin crawl, doesn't mean it isn't 100% perfect for all the people involved.

For example, I like to get to know someone BEFORE having sex. It's not part of my "early days" dating process. Meeting someone at a family bbq would be fun for me, because I know there would be fun and games, taking the pressure off awkward chit chat. And then there's food! And, since I don't like having sex with people I don't know very well, I could be guaranteed that at a family bbq, it wouldn't even be a remote issue.

I'm not big on spontaneity. I like to plan my life and know what to expect. I like predictability. Your "ideal" sounds awful to me.

That's why I really hate it when you speak in absolutes, as though your way is the best way for everyone, rather than being what it is: what's best for you personally.
Routinely and habitually allowing everyone you date around your kids before you have any indication of where the relationship is going isn't perfect for your kids, regardless of how perfect it is for their parent(s) and any partners they have.

Enjoying the luxury of more than one primary style partners whilst ensuring that it's as difficult as possible for them to form long term relationships with anyone else might be perfect for that person and beneficial for their kids but it's very unfair to the multiple partners who are having to tolerate their partner having other partners but are cut off from also having other partners.

It's ideal when the risk of harm to anyone involved is minimised and everyone is given the opportunity to meet their needs and is supported by the adult network in doing so.
 
Some people decide to put poly on hold whilst they have a young and growing family. I completely understand that decision but that should go for everyone. If there isn't time or resources for everyone to have more than one relationship because of the family needs, nobody should have more than one relationship. It shouldn't be that one person gets to enjoy polyamory whilst the other(s) are restricted by parental and partner duties. Make realistic room for everyone to be poly, or nobody is.

Seems like a pretty awful relationship where my partner says, "Hey, honey, I'm going to go out and date cuz I feel like it, so you stay home and take care of the kids every night." :p
 
The way they usually do it is by making sure any partner they have basically skips or avoids any rule or restriction that they set on other relationships.

Example, say I'm with Steve and we have a child. I don't want strange people who we don't know are going to stick around involved with our kid. Steve agrees with this on principle. Fair enough. I go for a partner who is an old friend of ours, someone who is already integrated with our kid and bypasses the concerns I had about strangers. We don't have another poly friendly old friend that is mutually attracted to Steve and I am not supportive in allowing Steve time away from our family and parenting duties which makes it impossible for him to enjoy his time away from us and build successful attachments to other people. I've purposely set this situation up so I can enjoy polyamory whilst not having to deal with the inconvenience of my partner also having other romantic obligations and connections.

It's the very height of selfishness and emotional manipulation.
 
The reason I think it's so bad is because it's deceptive. It appears they're being supportive but secretly they are just controlling you. But meh.
 
The reason I think it's so bad is because it's deceptive. It appears they're being supportive but secretly they are just controlling you. But meh.

Oh, I understand! It's simply that I've seen even worse forms of manipulation. To the point where I just can't even comprehend at first....

At least that I could comprehend happening, even if it's reprehensible.
 
It appears they're being supportive but secretly they are just controlling you.

Assuming they're consciously aware of what they're doing. A lot of people are incredibly oblivious to their own methods and motivations. It boggles the mind, but it's true.

A more likely scenario to me is that I'm with Steve and we have a child. Steve has been raised in a patriarchal society and believes it's primarily my responsibility to take care of the kids. He doesn't consciously realize he believes this, it just comes out in his behaviour. If you were to ask him, he would honestly tell you he believes our parenting responsibilities are shared equally. He doesn't realize how much I do behind the scenes.

Because I'm concerned that introducing new acquaintances to our children could be harmful, I ask Steve not to bring anyone home until they've been dating at least 12 months. The people Steve is interested in dating don't really want anything to do with our kids anyway, so he's happy to agree. That's when things take a turn South. Steve gets caught up in NRE and starts spending every other evening with his new girlfriend. When I bug him about never being home, all he can remember is that I made him promise not to bring her around. He thought he was just doing what I wanted.

Workaholics have been guilty of this for decades. They're the bread-winner and it's their responsibility to earn enough income to allow their family to live in comfort and security, especially if the other parent is a stay-at-home. So they work 80-hour weeks and are never around, except to sleep and brush their teeth. Their wives complain, because more than money, what they want is a present husband and father. The men are baffled because as far as they can tell, they're doing it for the family. Of course, the gender roles can be reversed.
 
The reason I think it's so bad is because it's deceptive. It appears they're being supportive but secretly they are just controlling you. But meh.

Gawd that is so true! And if the one "stuck" voices their discomfort and the unfairness, the other one with the "freedom" tends to say "you're trying to control me" instead of being accountable that its not equitable.
 
Back
Top