London/Boston

LondonGuy

New member
I live in London at the moment, am looking into moving to Boston, MA but don't know what the time frame could be for this.

I've been into BDSM for nearly all my sexual life and have known I've been into it since my very first fantasies. What I'm less sure on is my attitude towards Polyamorous relationships and I'm hoping to formalise my own thoughts in some way here.

Currently I would describe myself as an open minded monogomous guy, but I recognise that some people can't get everything they want from just one relationship. I'm confused about my own thoughts and whether I fully want to post them yet, I'll probably just lurk around a bit and be quite sociable without being opinionated. Especially willing to say hi to anyone in London, UK or Boston, MA.
 
Welcome Londonguy!

Welcome to the forum. I hope that you find this is useful resource as you try to sort out your thoughts.

While not into BDSM myself, I have a few friends who are solidly into it, and the bond that kink develops between folks is quite unique - for some it's purely about the BDSM, and has nothing to do with sex or love. For others, it's purely sexual, and for still others an unusual (to non-kink folk) bond like love forms between the participants. I think it's this last one that can cause some serious questions to arise, especially when the kink is done with someone who is not otherwise your partner. For some, this doesn't in any put a stressor on monogamy, for others it either creates a grey area, or it blows it apart.

Is this something like the questions that you are facing, or is it clearer-cut than that?
 
Hi LondonGuy,
Welcome to our forum.

Just curious, why Boston? I'll also note that from what I've heard, Boston is a sort of "haven" for poly people (I've hear that about Austin and Seattle as well).

In any case, I hope you feel at home here and enjoy interacting with our many members.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
Polyamoury and me

I wrote this and was going to post it on Fetlife but decided I didn't want to post it an open forum where I'm known personally while my thoughts are still not fully formed.

Polyamoury and me

Hopefully through writing things out I will be able to formalise my thoughts on Poly relationships. I've been reflecting on this for some time because I have been looking to move from London to Boston for personal/financial/work related reasons. While in Boston I realised the BDSM scene out there is largely poly (perhaps as much as 60% of people there) which differs dramatically to the scene in London where roughly 20% would be polyamorous or in some other form of open relationship. I'm trying to figure out my thoughts on polyamoury and formalise these so that it's easier to talk about them with future partners or potential partners.

I hope here to talk as much as possible in generalities. Where I reference specifics it will be issues I have had to think about at some point but lends itself well to this discussion.

I have never been interested in sharing true love around between multiple partners or allowing my partner to do the same. I like the connection I make with someone to be private, special, romantic, kinky and completely open and honest. I couldn't possibly be open and honest with multiple people while keeping a completely private and special bond with each of them. The two are at odds.

I would also really not want to share a partners affections or her intimacy with another man. I know I would get very jealous of the time she spent with him.

I have also never shown much interest in random one night hook ups, for several reasons...

1) I hate condoms and they are rather a necessity for the above to be done safely

2) I like the intimacy that comes with sharing sex with someone you love (or at least someone you feel you are falling in love with). Love and lust are for me very much connected

3) I like the security of knowing you are going to get damn good sex... You know how to please them and they know how to please you

4) Sex is just more relaxed and more fun when it is familiar, I want the girl I am with to be my best friend, my love, my girlfriend, my trophy, my submissive, my play partner and my slut. All mine, all in one girl.

For all the above reasons I would have always described myself as monogomous. However I do recognise that different people can bring different things to a relationship. Where a genuine stable triad is developed I can see that it is perfectly capable of functioning as well as any other relationship but it really does require the right people.

I did once consider such an arrangement precisely because the 2 girls involved brought different things to the table. My ex partner tricked me into getting her pregnant and turned out to be an awful mother, her best mate however was a fantastic mum and a very good influence. I would have been happy entering into a triad there. We played as a threesome once and it only ever went as far as heavy foreplay but I think mechanically we could have worked better as a triad than we did as a couple (not that I believe it would have lasted forever even in that format).

In terms of what I am able to bring to a relationship I could never offer myself as a submissive, if a switchy girlfriend wished to take a male sub I would not be offended provided it remained non amorous and non sexual. Similarly if they required a very masochistic or sadistic person or if they required intimacy with a woman, I would be unable to provide any of these and would not be offended provided it remained non amorous and non sexual.

By the same logic I would also wish for permission to take a rope bunny if my partner was unable to participate (either due to poor circulation, poor flexibility or just a fear of rope). I would not be sexual with such a person and would merely want to tie them up into various positions. I love rope and am just starting to learn to do suspension, I enjoy it very much and would like to continue.

I also recognise that some of the fantasies I have cannot be fulfilled within a truly monogomous relationship. For instance I would really like to double (or even tripple) penetrate a girl. I can imagine being used in every hole at once would induce subspace in many a sub.

Similarly, what guy wouldn't want to be pleased by 2 submissive women at the same time? I would also very much like to be able to force a partner to be bisexual with women of my choosing. It's the act of forcing her to perform such an act which I find most appealing, due to the dominance and humiliation involved. With genuinely bisexual women it takes these aspects out of it.

For all of the above I would only want to enter into this with friends I knew well. I would be happy if love developed in the sense that it is possible to love your best and closest friends, but I would never want to consider true love; the intimate kind which I want with only one person.

So does all the above make me polyamorous? Or just an open minded monogomous individual?

Things are complicated further by the fact that in January I was looking at moving to either the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand; I applied for jobs in all of these places (as well as one job in Germany) but ultimately got a job in London. Following a recent sales meeting at my companies head quarters in Boston, MA I have realised it may be easier than ever to make that move.

However how soon I would be able to make such a move is another issue? My boss is unavailable to discuss the matter for 3 weeks, I am still 2 months from completing my probation and I still have 9 months left on the contract for my flatshare. Similarly he may want me to complete this Fiscal year (9 months) or complete the full three stages of my training (2 years), or it may all turn out to be a pipe dream that for whatever reason never happens! I cannot make serious long term plans for my future with so many unknowns.

The week before I flew out to Boston I met a great girl who is extremely beautiful, very intelligent, very driven and successfull, very submissive within the bedroom and absolutely lovely as a person. She has really had a very sudden impact on my life and I could easily fall for her very hard.

However she has just split up with her previous master because he moved away, I don't want to put her through the same trauma again even if it is 2 years or so away. I've been honest with her about this and said that I am looking to move but don't know of a timeframe. I think she respected my honesty and she seemed unbothered by it as she agrees that it's "far too early to make long term plans".

While I was in Boston however I met a really wonderfull girl out there too. Again all the above points apply and we hung out together on the night before I left, nothing happened and nor would it have been appropriate, but I did still have a lovely evening.

In order to truly understand my train of thought here I must explain that I do not believe there is one person out there for each of us. If there were then the shit news for the vast majority of people is you will never find your true love. Bollocks to that! I think we are capable of building relationships with many different people but it requires effort from both parties and also requires a certain amount of luck in order for everything to fall into place.

I would really like permission to continue flirting with this girl. I do not see either girl as being a threat to the other since I would not want a trans-Atlantic long distance relationship and will not choose where I live based on which girls are within each city. Where I live is a decision I will take based on what is best for me as an individual in terms of my finances, my job prospects and my quality of life. I feel like I now have a network of friends in Boston and could make the move without feeling alone. It's also only 6 and a half hours back so I could still see my friends and family twice a year.

I guess in this respect I could be best described as 'situationally polyamorous'. I really do want to ask about whether the girl over here would be ok with this but one of my greatest fears is upsetting the people I care about and I think (albeit we've only been on 3 dates) I do really care about her and like her a lot already. Is the fear of asking greater or the regret in not asking?
 
In the long run, I'd think it'd be better than ask, rather than always have to wonder, "What if I would have asked?"

If polyamory is thought of as an orientation, I might suggest you were somewhat polyamorous but mostly monogamous. Your post was thorough and described your position well.

I hope things go well with your job/s and relationship/s, regardless of if/whether you decide to move.
 
Tuppence from the peanut gallery:

While in Boston I realised the BDSM scene out there is largely poly (perhaps as much as 60% of people there) which differs dramatically to the scene in London where roughly 20% would be polyamorous or in some other form of open relationship.

Loose correlation, not causation. Poly is not required for kink, nor is kink required from poly. This is one of my soapboxes -- I hate it when people conflate the two.

I have never been interested in sharing true love around between multiple partners or allowing my partner to do the same. I like the connection I make with someone to be private, special, romantic, kinky and completely open and honest. I couldn't possibly be open and honest with multiple people while keeping a completely private and special bond with each of them. The two are at odds.

I would also really not want to share a partners affections or her intimacy with another man. I know I would get very jealous of the time she spent with him.

So... you're monogamous, or at least monogamish (someone on here uses that as part of hir screen name). There's nothing wrong with that.

2) I like the intimacy that comes with sharing sex with someone you love (or at least someone you feel you are falling in love with). Love and lust are for me very much connected

3) I like the security of knowing you are going to get damn good sex... You know how to please them and they know how to please you

That's not a poly/mono thing, that's a human thing. I'm poly and I think of sex that way, too.

4) Sex is just more relaxed and more fun when it is familiar, I want the girl I am with to be my best friend, my love, my girlfriend, my trophy, my submissive, my play partner and my slut. All mine, all in one girl.

Whereas a lot of that would be a show-stopper for my polyamorous, sexually vanilla ass. (I could do the pro-domme thing with some training, but not as a sexual bond with anyone else. It's more a "Come and get your mindfuck" thing.) Mostly it's the "my" word that has always put me off. As soon as they started insisting I belonged exclusively to them, I had to get out of the relationship. I will happily be a best friend, a love, a girlfriend, and even a trophy, but as a free agent. :)

I did once consider such an arrangement precisely because the 2 girls involved brought different things to the table. My ex partner tricked me into getting her pregnant and turned out to be an awful mother, her best mate however was a fantastic mum and a very good influence. I would have been happy entering into a triad there. We played as a threesome once and it only ever went as far as heavy foreplay but I think mechanically we could have worked better as a triad than we did as a couple (not that I believe it would have lasted forever even in that format).

It's one thing to collaborate for non-romantic purposes, like childrearing. I'd need co-parents if I ever parented, and I do mean the plural. I'm seeing that as more akin to splitting rent with a close friend, though.

...so, your child. Are you at all involved in its life? Will it be visiting you in Boston? Is it fully-grown at this point or something?

I also recognise that some of the fantasies I have cannot be fulfilled within a truly monogomous relationship. For instance I would really like to double (or even tripple) penetrate a girl. I can imagine being used in every hole at once would induce subspace in many a sub.

It's all ethical non-monogamy, but that umbrella term covers swinging, play, FWB, and polyamory. Your level of sexual involvement is not necessarily your level of emotional involvement, and that's okay!

I would also very much like to be able to force a partner to be bisexual with women of my choosing. It's the act of forcing her to perform such an act which I find most appealing, due to the dominance and humiliation involved. With genuinely bisexual women it takes these aspects out of it.

This genuinely queer woman would probably slap you across the face if you tried, yes.

So does all the above make me polyamorous? Or just an open minded monogomous individual?

At best, open-minded monogamous. I'm not seeing anything that would indicate you want more than extra play partners.

I cannot make serious long term plans for my future with so many unknowns.

So you make that very clear, and anyone who can't handle it is out of the question. (Though if that were my boss making me wonder, I'd be upset. Big difference between "I could be in Boston next month" and "I could be in Boston in two years".)

I would really like permission to continue flirting with this girl. I do not see either girl as being a threat to the other since I would not want a trans-Atlantic long distance relationship and will not choose where I live based on which girls are within each city.

The ethical part of ethical non-monogamy demands that they be allowed to decide whether they are comfortable with that. You cannot judge how each woman will feel about the other. You certainly cannot tell each woman how she feels.

Is the fear of asking greater or the regret in not asking?

She has to know. If you want to keep this at all above-board, she has to know there's someone else. If you do not ask, and go ahead with having a girl in each port anyway, you are cheating on both of them. That's not poly by a long shot.
 
Thank Kevin :) I wasn't sure whether such spectrums could exist for something like poly relationships. I'm well aware of such theories behind LGBT and believe nobody is 100% straight or 100% gay. Similarly for BDSM kinks - I always thought of Polyamorous/monogamous as being something far more black and white but your thoughts on this helped a lot!

Love From Girl; your post annoyed me somewhat. You seem to have misinterpretted several of the points I made.

I am WELL aware that LGBT, Poly relationships and BDSM are all three distinct separate scenes and people do not have to be into all of them just to be into one of them. However all three are forms of alternative views to sex, relationships and sexuality. To this end I have found they have a very similar attitude and open mindedness.

There is also a reasonable amount of crossover between these three scenes, I know more LGBT people within the BDSM scene than I know outside of it and I know more poly people within the scene than I know outside of it (I actually know none outside of the BDSM scene but that is not to say that I am fully aware such a scene exists). I was only commenting that I was slightly surprised by the difference in the amount of crossover when comparing two different cities.

My ex tricked me into getting pregnant through not telling me that she wasn't using her birth control. My son is three and a half, I was his sole carer for the first 4 months of his life and his mother did nothing, she drove me into serious debt and depression through the way she treated me. She always used my son as a threat and ultimately when I ended it with her she stopped me from seeing him. I went to lawyers trying to get access raised these issues and they only said that it looked like he'd been well cared for over the first 4 months of his life. She is an attrocious mother and has blocked every attempt I've made for access.

If I try again now that I am working I will have to pay a fortune to get a lawyer with no guarantee of success. As it is I will have to pay 15% of anything I earn in child maintenance and a further amount to repay my student loan. In the UK both of these expenses are calculated using a Pay as You Earn (PAYE) system and if you are not earning within the UK then no payment is required - These are the personal/financial reasons I mentioned for moving and beyond this I would rather not talk about it.

The personal questions you asked regarding will my son visit me in Boston... I'd love him to but considering I don't get to see him in the UK at the moment I highly doubt I would be allowed to take him out the country. When he is old enough to understand I will find him and I will build a relationship with him as best I can. I realise I am missing out on some of the best and most influential periods of his life but I have tried 3 times through legal channels to gain access with no success, yet I still have to pay his mother so that she can go out and get drunk with her friends. Don't tell me for one second that I am turning my back on my son, you can have no possible idea what I went through. I am trying to deal with a shit situation as best I can, that's life.

Forced bisexuality is a kink. It is something I have always been curious about. For me the main draw of BDSM is D/s, I'm not so much into the S/m "I'm going to hit you until you bleed mentality", though I'd be totally fine and open minded with anyone who is! Part of my dominance is always wanting to know what limits my submissive would go to for me. Forcing a straight girl to go down on another girl is humiliating for her and doing it because I have told her to is an act of submission, it's something that would massively turn me on and I would be very proud of any sub that went through with it.

This kind of 'submission test' is less relavant if the girl is genuinely bisexual or bicurious but I would still let a girlfriend play with other women if bisexuality was part of her sexual make up.

I cannot be angry at my boss for making me wait to discuss things. He is an excellent boss, the fairest I've had throughout my working life and has been very supportive whenever I've had an issue. He is snowed under with about 5 big projects at the moment and is due to be taking some holiday soon. I am realistic and know this can wait until his return.

Now the bits that really annoyed me.....

I never once said that the choice here for me was 'whether to continue things with both girls secretively or openly'. I would not do that because I am not an arsehole. I have not spoken to the girl in Boston since we went out together the night before I flew back; she messaged me a couple of days ago but I haven't yet responded.

I have been open and honest with BOTH girls about my long term future and the uncertainty in any given timeframes. I hope this should prove to you that I am ALWAYS open and honest about things as this is the only fair way to be.

The challenge for me now is to assess my own attitude towards polyamorous relationships and how best I should approach this situation. If (and thats a big if that I'm still trying to determine) I decide I would like to continue flirting with the girl in Boston then this is an idea I will present as best I can to the girl I am seeing here in London. I would not go behind her back and if she was not happy with the idea then I would not proceed.

I am here to establish and formalise my own viewpoints hopefully so that I can discuss them with both girls mentioned above but also any potential future partners. I would not continue communication with both girls once there is a relationship established with either of them unless I fully discuss everything with both of them and have their approval. It would seem a relationship is begining to form with the girl in London and I need to establish whether I want to have this discussion or just cut things off with the girl in Boston.
 
Be annoyed all you like, but I raised the points I thought were valid.

The situation with your child and his egg donor sucks so hard. I'm sorry she's behaving so poorly. I did not imply that you were turning your back on your son; I was merely inquiring as to what your plans were for him.

As I don't know you from Adam, I also don't know whether you're the sort who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Mea maxima culpa for not being all butterflies and rainbows about that.
 
So I just had a lovely long weekend at home and then saw the 'London Girl' today, I spent all weekend over analysing things and decided to just ask her for her input. Turns out I shouldn't have spent all weekend worrying and over analysing. She actually seems fine with the idea.

I've explained that I don't want to choose where I live based on which girls live in each country and she seems to understand this logic and can appreciate what I'm saying that neither girl is a threat to the other.

The thing I can't understand is her view on true love; she thinks that there is one person out there for each of us and if we're lucky fate will bring us to each other, she just wants to have fun along the way until she meets that person. That is a lovely romantic idea but seems slightly weird (and very scary) to me and I don't know how to interpret it. Have I just trashed all romanticism in her head by confirming that I couldn't possibly be her 'one' long before either of us could ever really know?

I guess my view that there are many people out there that we could build a relationship with is just a stepping stone towards polyamory. The difference is (under normal stable conditions) I would normally say that I want to find one of those people and build a relationship with her. Whereas a polyamorous person would look at such a situation and say that since there are all these people I am capable of building a relationship with why not build a relationship each time I meet any one of them?

Now I'm not in normal stable conditions given that I don't know where my futures going, so this is influencing my train of thought and that's why I wonder whether it may make most sense to describe myself as situationally poly? If such a thing exists?

Either way I'm very glad I had this conversation with her. She seems to be falling for me a lot more slowly than I am for her and is very open minded about our futures. I think her positive attitude (and general ability to appeal to my filthy kinky mind) is making me fall for her even more. I think she's just proved to me that I do over think things and over analyse things far too much. Having got all that out the way I feel more able to relax and put things into perspective :)

The next thing to establish is a timescale for my move but this means talking to my boss and finding out his views on everything.
 
Since there are nearly 7,000,000,000 people on earth, and since I only get to meet a very small subset of them, I really hope that I'm not just matched to only one.

Unless you believe in the magical power of Fate, I suppose....
 
Since there are nearly 7,000,000,000 people on earth, and since I only get to meet a very small subset of them, I really hope that I'm not just matched to only one.

Unless you believe in the magical power of Fate, I suppose....

Can I believe in fate and multiple perfect matches? :)
 
Yes, you can believe in Fate and mulitiple partners. Greek myth if full stories involving muitiple partners and Fate, but that's usually Fate fucking things up with mulitple parnerships. The romanitic concept of fate and polyamoury is another topic one worthy of its own thread, and as soon as I finish working - which will be very late in the morning - I will start such a thread. :)

Incidently, I've really enjoyed the detailed discussion of your situation.
 
Thank you Drifter :) Normally when I find myself confused I think on things and have a tendency to dwell a bit... when that doesn't work I write... and when that doesn't write I often end up posting them on some forum somewhere hoping some random stranger can make sense of my confusion!

I appeared to have reached that same stumbling block again but posting it here and reading Kevins point that if poly/mono were viewed in terms of a sexuality then I would be somewhere in the middle made a lot of sense. From an outside view poly/mono seems like a very one way or the other kind of lifestyle but why shouldn't individuals be somewhere in the grey area?

Sometimes life can be fun when you can see things from both points of view.

I'm a firm believer that nobody is 100% straight or 100% gay. I think the labels we assign to sexuality make life a lot easier for us to process and understand each other but assigning us as individuals to those labels can often be a bit confusing. It's only when you look into such things and gain an understanding of terms like bicurious and hetroflexible that you begin to realise things are allowed to be grey. From my experience it's pretty unusual to find many hetrosexual men who are that open minded about the issue?

I guess that's very much where I was with the poly/mono debate.

Now I'm musing in my own head as to whether I could cope being truly polyamorous... I think I could cope with screwing some other girl with my partners permission, I wouldn't be able to focus or enjoy it without, I think I would struggle even more with allowing a partner I loved to be with other men
 
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