Limited Polyamory

There was just a post recently by a man whose wife has been banging her old boyfriend for a year and when he finally connected with someone and she had a little boyfriend trouble she wanted to end poly right there. no one jumped on her for a "one vagina policy" or called her "sexist."
I think I might have to call BS on that one. Difficult to tell, as the script is not uncommon & similar stories have appeared regularly.

In one at least, a few of us did say this was nonsense, & that it revealed an understanding of "poly" that was questionable at absolute best. I don't think any of us explicitly called her "sexist" or referred to OVP, likely because both are rather (1) bloody obvious &/or (2) sophomoric.

Really, anyone who gets pantybunched about "a recent post" ought to put up a link to the source of the offense. :)
 
I'd like to offer another perspective. My partner and I split up for around 8 months almost 7 years ago. We had 2 very young children (4 and 2) and so we decided to stay living together. He moved into the spare room, we parented as normal and acted the same around the kids. The only things that were different was our romantic/sexual relationship and where we slept.

For those 8 months, I got to see a different side of him. Our focus was always on the kids, instead of my anger and his guilt. Without that I highly doubt we'd be together today, planning a wedding and very much as in love as we were at the beginning.
At the time, we were monogamous, but he had cheated.

Parenting together without the attachment is possible, and in my case it helped us find our footing together again.
 
Oh wow, such an interesting discussion about parenting values has ensued here :eek:

Jake, I hope you're still reading along although I wouldn't blame you for being disgusted after you presented a well-thought decision and a bunch of people who don't know you flat out told you you're too closed-minded and fucking up your life.
I find the forum members are a bunch of people with strong individualities, including strong opinions, and not afraid to present those. This is likely based on out-of-the-norm life experience. Please don't judge us too harshly and be proud of sparkling such a deep interest in this community.

I'm a bit startled by how easily statistics has been dismissed as unimportant. I believe that's also based on an experience that most poly people have, namely that for most of us living out of the norm is a choice. What's 'normal' in a certain areas is always based on people who haven't put that much effort into it. Most norms can be escaped one way or another.
You are wise to think of this and look at the studies on it. No, it's not BS. Kids are impacted by divorce. ...
You're right that the extra 1000, 2000 a month, whatever it would be to provide a second home, provides a lot of quality experiences, sports camps, travel, viola lessons, all sorts of enriching things for kids that expand their opportunities and give them better lives, and I think that's been too lightly dismissed here.
it's also a dark world for kids to live in where their parents have a large basic incompatibility as far as romantic sexual love. They will mirror their parents' relationship style in their own lives. Put up with more than they should from a partner. Or avoid relationships altogether.
Yes&Yes. Have you factored that in? What else did we leave out?
This forum is sometimes a real school of scientific thinking (says the physicist) ;)

I wonder what happened in the relationship to cause Jake's wife to stop desiring him?
If there was attraction like ever, I do believe that's a really really important point, together with what led to the cheating. You probably talked about it in therapy, but it's entirely possible that even with an experienced counsellor you barely scratched the surface. Subtle but deep issues (e.g. our beliefs about how the world works and how people are) usually surface in relationships and it's really hard to address those in couples' therapy - it's only deep individual work that can do the shift.
 
Last edited:
But remember, polyamory is a brand new form of relationshipping, brought about by the women's movement. Women are demanding they have the autonomy to relate to others as independent humans, not as the property of ONE MAN (first father, then husband) who allows or does not allow them to make choices and have power in her life.

Sorry, Im calling bull shit on this. This nonsense that just because a man does not want his wife fucking other men makes him a radical sexist is such crap. A relationship between two people is not supposed to be where a man considers a woman property NOR is it where a woman considers a man just an inconvenience whose feelings should be ignored for the pursuit of some political agenda. There was just a post recently by a man whose wife has been banging
her old boyfriend for a year and when he finally connected with someone and she had a little boyfriend trouble she wanted to end poly right there. no one jumped on her for a "one vagina policy" or called her "sexist.

Now back to Jay here, Jay every thing in life is not measured like a chemical formula. If you are still around, i would read what WHAT HAPPENED wrote to you regarding your kids. No one here knows your wife or your kids and no one here can predict exactly what will happen. The majority of people in this world will most likely agree that having children in their formative years watching their parents date other people and being exposed to this probably is not great. That does not mean it cannot work and its like playing the odds in Vegas.
I hope Gala Girl chips in here at some point because I believe not only will she give you measured advice but I believe she has carefully evaluated with her husband the effects on children and has closed her marriage until the kids are grown.

The big elephant in the room still is that your wife has NOT been truthful with you about anything, she has gone behind your back and in most cases past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior unless something alters the cause of that behavior. You need to figure out why she has been disingenuous with you and since her cheating was INFIDELITY not poly a therapist who specializes in that probably would be your better choice.
My question wold be what agreement or choice that you make right now would you TRULY believe that your wife would honor for more than a short time.


No one is calling anyone a raging sexist. Mags is right in pointing out that that type of mono thinking is derived from it's patriarchal beginnings. That is true even if one does not realize it. The same is true of a woman with a OVP. Society evolves. The change doesn't happen over night.
 
I am very interested in seeing these articles/studies/forums. Please provide the links.

As well, I am also interested in hearing from the OTHER kids: those who think nonmonogamy was a good thing, & those who really don't much care one way or another. Certainly you know of such information.

Though you avoid mentioning it, there is going to be a high degree of self-reporting bias, right? Like, someone new who logs onto Polyamory.com & reads about all the griping & whining & complaining & hand-wringing -- & is kinda clueless about bias effects -- would come to the conclusion that nonmonogamous people are a just bunch of self-absorbed goofballs, overgrown spoiled brats avoiding emotional maturity. After all, only a tiny minority are lah-de-dah airheads perpetually spreading sunshine everywhere. ;)


Here’s a couple I know of.

http://www.mommyish.com/2013/11/28/polyamorous-family-holidays/

http://www.mommyish.com/2013/11/14/teens-and-polyamorous-parents/

Also kev wrote a thread on this a while back which listed one or both of these and I thought you were a part of that discussion did you forget or Am I remember this wrong?
 
Last edited:
His last post was over a week ago. :( Which is actually okay, as long as he has gotten the help from this forum that he needed.
 
These are just two opinion pieces on a blog, which means nothing other than hooray: two opinions. I can find you 10,000 opinion pieces written by miserable children of monogamous parents.

Really.??? You actually think you can find 10,000 miserable kids which draw the conclusion for their misery is the structure of their parents monogamous relationship. I wish I had time to test this ...let me know how many you find.
 
Really.??? You actually think you can find 10,000 miserable kids which draw the conclusion for their misery is the structure of their parents monogamous relationship. I wish I had time to test this ...let me know how many you find.

And there must be billions of people who grew up with parents in an unhappy mono relationship. It's not about the shape of the relationship(s), it's about how well the parents do it, and how they parent. Always. Personally, I think a closed isolated nuclear family has been shown to be a pretty pathetic way to raise kids.
 
And there must be billions of people who grew up with parents in an unhappy mono relationship. It's not about the shape of the relationship(s), it's about how well the parents do it, and how they parent. Always. Personally, I think a closed isolated nuclear family has been shown to be a pretty pathetic way to raise kids.

I don’t remeber all the details of your history are you saying your open marriage greatly benefited your kids or are you saying that your closed family was a pathetic failure in raising your kids ???


Angelina: you might not be aware of the backstory involving the 2 articles ( opinion pieces) I linked. Way back when a new member to the forum ... a women who found love at the office or something maybe had a crush or had an affair..came home and dropped the poly bomb on hubby got him to open up. I’m not sure if she had an ongoing relationship with mommy-ish blog website before or it started after she went poly. Anyway she started posting how wonderful her life was and her families life. That provoked the response from the young girl. Ironically the the woman ( gorgeouskitten ) her marriage and other relationship failed.
 
Last edited:
Yes you’re right a newbie turned advocate out proselytizing the virtues of her new found lifestyle ends up losing both relationships and deciding poly really wasn’t for her after all is more poetically tragic.

I’m not sure if she was being paid for her articles but we might have some good old fashion greed involved too.
 
I don’t remeber all the details of your history are you saying your open marriage greatly benefited your kids or are you saying that your closed family was a pathetic failure in raising your kids ???

Neither. Why would you assume I was speaking only of my own particular life, anecdotally, when we were all speaking generally of the population at large?

edit: maybe because everything you think or post about related to poly comes directly out of your own personal experience. We don't all do that however.
 
Last edited:
Yes you’re right a newbie turned advocate out proselytizing the virtues of her new found lifestyle ends up losing both relationships and deciding poly really wasn’t for her after all is more poetically tragic.

I’m not sure if she was being paid for her articles but we might have some good old fashion greed involved too.

What is your agenda/point here? I'm having a hard time getting it. No one should ever be poly? A MF monogamous parental unit til death do they part is always deal? Children of unhappily mono married couples are always happier and healthier than children of happily healthily poly parents? If you're a single parent/divorcee/widow you should never date again? You were dinged in your marriage so you're going to gloat every time someone else's marriage goes awry? What?
 
Last edited:
Without going back and quoting:

The question has been brought up of what 'caused' Jayke's wife to stop desiring him/start cheating. Would this fly if it were a guy cheating on his wife and saying, "Well, she got fat, I didn't find her attractive anymore, so I had sex with someone else and didn't bother telling her." ?

It sounds like blaming the victim to me.

The discussion of kids treats the relationship structure and the individual parenting as two separate things. Of course there are some poly parents who may be better parents than some mono parents. But the structure of the relationship does impact how a parent parents.

A poly parent is almost by definition spending a regular amount of time away from the kids dating and/or with other partners. Of course it impacts kids both to have parents gone so frequently and regularly AND to know they're gone to date other people, making a free choice that they'd rather be with someone else two or three nights a week than with the kids. Kids take these things to heart. They take meaning from them.

Plenty of these kids are being left home alone--here's 20 bucks, kid, get yourself something.

These kids very often have adults coming into their lives to whom they get attached...and then lose. We know this isn't healthy for kids.

The likelihood of divorce increases with bringing in new partners. All things being equal, no, divorce is not better for kids. Of course there are some bad situations where it's better. But on average, no, it's better for kids to keep an intact family, to have both their parents close.

And I'm sorry, but no, kids do not give a rat's ass whether their parents are sexually fulfilled. "I'm miserable because mom's not getting enough sex and is sexually frustrated and I wish she'd had more and more fulfilling sex even if it meant dad leaving home forever," said no kid, ever.

Reverie just posted about how much it costs to be out dating all the time. And being poly often makes it much harder to just have date nights on the cheap, at home because a spouse and in the case of parents, kids are there. XBF was spending a thousand a month taking me out. For a parent, that's twelve thousand a year that is not going to flugelhorn lessons, summer camp, a family trip to the Grand Canyon.

That's time and money that is not going to dinner with their own kids.

Kids see these things. Kids feel these things.

Sure these things happen in SOME mono marriage. But they happen almost by definition in most poly marriages.

Angelina says these are just opinions nothing more. As if to dismiss them. They were posted because Ravenscroft asked for them. He challenged me, suggesting perhaps no kid feels as I said? There are the posts: yes, there ARE kids who feel that way and it makes complete sense that they do. But now that I have been shown to be right [yes there are kids who feel exactly as I said they do], it's being dismissed as irrelevant. Way to move the goal posts.

I see one person on this board who seems to spend a lot of time with her kids, not be out partying all the time, and not be sliding men in and out of their lives and hearts. Those kids may grow up being just fine with poly.

But as a poly community, we need to address honestly that many other kids are growing up more in the circumstances I described--which I see in living color from other members on this forum. It is our job as parents to do the best we can for our children so if we're going to be poly and parents, we need to be honest about how poly may be affecting our kids.
 
Last edited:
It would be victim blaming if they were looking for a reason to blame hime. I would not assume that is the intent.

Children may not care about the specifics, but they do pick up on problems between their parents. Putting up a facade might fool them when they are younger, but it won't last.
 
EVERY couple has their problems. Sorry, no, every kid doesn't pick up on that and wish mom and dad would split. And from what I've seen here the problems, the drama, the swing of NRE and breakups, the jealousies, etc. are more extreme in poly most of the time.

There are attempts to use exceptions to negate the rule.
 
EVERY couple has their problems. Sorry, no, every kid doesn't pick up on that and wish mom and dad would split. And from what I've seen here the problems, the drama, the swing of NRE and breakups, the jealousies, etc. are more extreme in poly most of the time.

There are attempts to use exceptions to negate the rule.

So one in a thousand doesn't pick up on it? One in a million?

I agree that most kids don't wish their parents would split. They wish their parents would work it out. They often wonder what THEY did to cause problems. As they get older there is often guilt associated with the realization that their parents stayed together and led miserables lives for their sake.

But the bottom line is there is no "rule". Every situation is different and requires it's own unique solutions.
 
Back
Top