The "lopsided poly" phenomenon

Ravenscroft

Banned
I've made note of this lately:
it isn't particularly rare that someone who goes haring off after some fling allows :rolleyes: their "mono" partner similar freedom, only to go into panic mode when that partner actually becomes interested in someone else.

Worse particularly when the first's NRE begins to fade & they start to rethink this whole "poly" thing & demand a return to the safe confines of monogamy.
I've seen it first-hand for years, though it first got my attention as a phenomenon of the swing community.

There, the stereotype was that a man would browbeat/whine/wear down his wife/girlfriend so that she'd be his "beard" & get him into all that free hoochie. Often, he was secure in the notion that she'd sit off in a "clothed" social area. So, as he was discovering that he wasn't particularly special, she would be courted by various men & women, & begin to realize she was indeed desirable. Some couples broke when the wife chose to have sex with others; some made it far enough that she was excited about being a center of attention right when he played the "it'd be best for our mariage if we give up on this silly stuff" card.

Recently, it's appeared in a handful of unrelated tales, & I feel it ought to be explicitly addressed.

Now I wonder...

Has this been addressed by any of the published "poly authorities" that've popped up since 2004? (I made comments on PMM about how sometimes someone who "allows freedom" to a partner goes apesh!t "when it all gets really real" but can't remember if I included it in the book.)

Has anyone given it a name? I once called it "first-out backlash" but that didn't catch on. :eek:

I really think that it could be fruitful to track stories that appear in these forums, & maybe to launch a thread specific to it rather than constant rehashing.
 
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