Possibly Poly?

I'm not sure how to open this discussion but here I go:

My wife (we'll call her Heather) and I are exploring the possibility of allowing a special person into our marriage if that right person ever comes around, and before we were ever married, she told me that she could never be a one man woman and I told her I love her, trust her, and respect her so much that I would allow whatever made her happy as long as we talked about it first and as long as we kept communicating with each other. I told her our happiness as a couple came first so long as we didn't do anything hurtful to ourselves or others.

I also told her I had the same needs as her because I never really believed people were meant to only love one person or be with one person for a lifetime. I tried the one man, one woman relationship and it has never worked but temporarily.

We have been married many years, and we have investigated from an informational standpoint, several options such as swinging, cuckolding, open marriage, married dating with couples, etc. None of these struck either of us as something we could enjoy. Neither of us are the type of person to sleep with just anyone, so she and I both want to do this the right way.

She and I have both had other partners through-out these years, but no one worked out in the end as an addition to our lives on a permanent basis. Those were our younger years though. We were never sure what was going to work for us.

These were good, caring, respectful relationships with good people. After all this time, we never knew how to identify our marriage or life. She has decided the best thing for her would be to have a partner who she and I could both know well, trust, respect, care about, and share our lives with. She has offered me the same freedom out of her idea of fairness and to allow equal ground for us both as a gift of love.

We both abhor labels and categorizations, but realize we also have to have a way to wrap our heads around this if we are going to avoid pitfalls, problems, and other undesired outcomes. The past relationships ended on positive notes.

Prior to find each other and marrying after dating for a year, neither of us had much relationship experience.

Where do we find others like us? How do we protect our privacy and dignity and protect the privacy and dignity of possible partners in a society that thinks everything is their business?

I'm coming from the understanding that any alternative lifestyle or alternative marriage is generally disapproved of as our society seemingly moves backwards in these days.

We are both wired in the same way when it comes to being caring, loving, fun people who both need to give and receive love and companionship with more than one person, and we care not for the narrow minded, uneducated, inconsiderate opinions of others who can only see things one way. Life has always been better for us both when that added special someone was there with us.

Thanks for listening to us and accepting us as we seriously evaluate this choice for our life together.
 
Welcome!! There are lots of awesome supportive people here!! Read a lot and keep sharing!!
 
She has decided the best thing for her would be to have a partner who she and I could both know well, trust, respect, care about, and share our lives with. She has offered me the same freedom out of her idea of fairness and to allow equal ground for us both as a gift of love.

Where do we find others like us? How do we protect our privacy and dignity and protect the privacy and dignity of possible partners in a society that thinks everything is their business?

Life has always been better for us both when that added special someone was there with us.

A few thoughts. To protect your privacy, you probably would want partners who share the same needs for privacy/being out, that you do. It sounds like somebody who is very out about being open and wants to shout that they love you to the neighbors, Facebook friends, restaurant patrons etc, would be a poor match for you?

As for dignity...well I don't really understand that, since I don't think it's undignified to have other partners, but there are a number of good threads on here about "coming out" which have suggestions on how to answer people if they butt their nose into your business and you want to express (in a "dignified way") that nothing is going on, or nothing wrong is happening, etc. Maybe I don't understand what you mean by dignity.

I am guessing you are saying above that you and your wife want live in partners? I am not quite clear on if you are saying you're looking on sharing a partner, or each having your own. I want to say while it's ideal for me to have partners be great friends with my husband, and it sounds like that is what you have come to decide would be best, personally I'd hate to rule out dating people who don't fit that mold because if I had made that a hard goal for forming relationships. I'd miss out on some awesome people like my current boyfriend.

If you are wanting live-in partners, I'd have more to say but I figure I'll wait to find out if that is what you two want.
 
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Welcome. You'll find an enormous source of information here to guide you.
 
I'm new to this myself but I'd suggest taking one day at a time. Since you are both open and are communicating you're likely more secure which will be apparent to others and wil invite others into your circle.

Best of luck.
 
My wife (we'll call her Heather) and I are exploring the possibility of allowing a special person into our marriage if that right person ever comes around

I understand how you meant this to sound, but I have to share with you the way I read it and how I felt about it. I cringed at the wording "allowing a special person into our marriage"

Just think about how that could come across to a potential partner... like it's a private club that you're willing to grant special permission to certain people to enter, but only if they meet your ultra-exclusive criteria.

Now, you sound like nice and decent people who actually would care about the feelings, individuality, and rights of any potential partner. I merely caution against thinking of your marriage as something that other people might want to "join." In other words, it can leave a "Sister Wives" taste in the mouth, which doesn't sound like what you intend...

You might have more success finding loving partners if you go at it separately. Your wife can find a boyfriend, you can find a girlfriend, and neither of those people has to be involved with the other spouse beyond cordial respect.
 
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