Just because we've had multiple lovers, I wouldn't say we're poly. For you and yours, it has to be deeper than just lovers. Same here for me and my "life loves". (love Mono's term). I truly believe this is and can be an everlasting situation for us 3. I'm sure you do with your 2 guys also. My definition really requires that long term committment. Anything less, would be just lovers to me. I can't in good conscience ask my wife to change her life and our marriage, for just a lover. I don't know if I've said it to her in that way, but I need to.
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Mark, I am going to start off by saying I am jealous of your wife and Life Love in many ways. I see you as the perfect example of a functioning and
sustainable polyamorous “v” founded in deep love.
I am often frustrated at the sense I get from some people at our poly meetings that to be poly you have to be constantly open to the possibility of new relationships of varying degrees. It’s like if you aren’t available and willing to date you are not part of the club...if that's the memebership requirement, I'm out, I can't and won't do it.
If you have the ability or are in fact intimately and openly in love with more than one person you are polyamorous. It doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily be constantly available to other poly people to “test the waters” in hopes of forming a new relationship. You may never add another Life Love to your life. That doesn’t mean you are not poly.
Being polyamorous does not mean you can’t have an extremely loving family with a defined number of loves. It is not un-polyamorous to say; “me and my two or three lovers are in a committed life long relationship”.
The commitment you have to your wife and Life Love is awe inspiring to me. You seem fulfilled and happy. I see so many others searching and searching or doing things simply because they feel it is the “Polyamorous” thing to do.
Most of the people at the poly meetings I go to seem to have this idea of not committing and “free love” justified by the word “polyamorous”. I don’t see them forming life long families the way Redpepper, her husband and me are. I once heard her say “sometimes I wish it could just be me, my husband and you”….I felt as though she thought being polyamorous meant it could never be that…like being polyamorous meant it could never be just us…that saddened me because she sounded trapped by a way of loving that is supposed to be freeing.
Her husband needs someone of value for sure, and I would love for Redpepper to get the female intimacy she wants… but I don’t see an end to the addition of new lovers almost just because "that's what poly people do"..that is not sustainable for me because I know what I put in to this, everything. I would hate to experience the introducing of new lovers just because that is how being “polyamorous” is supposed to be. Perhaps my definition and expectations of poly will be too different from thiers in the end. No fault there..just human nature
If that's the case I will direct my love towards being the best friend thier family could wish for. Either way I want us all to be together in our old age.
I know what I can thrive, grow and stay healthy in.
I stay in the moment, it is wonderful for me and our love as a family is flourishing…the future will get here when it does…hopefully we will still be chatting on this forum my friend