advice for a newbie?

Garblin

New member
Hey, so looking around at other peoples experiences, I seem to be in a less common situation. I realized looking back on my past relationships that my problem has generally been that whoever the one person was, there was always some part of me that felt unfulfilled, and that part changed with each relationship. I don't know where to attribute this to in myself, I know I'm a complex person, so I always used to figure that I needed to find someone as complex (and somehow miraculously complex in the same ways) as me, yea right.

So now I'm wanting to give polyamory a try, see if I can perhaps not worry about finding ONE person to feel fulfilled with, maybe find a few (I can't see myself being with more than three honestly) who can fulfill all those needs? But I'm not really sure how to go about this from being single, most other people here look like they're figuring this out from being in a mono relationship and moving from there to poly. Anyone else moved from single to poly around here? any advice for starting out? (apart from the obvious 'be honest')
 
I don't think anything is more common than something else in poly. There is a large variety of "ways" of doing poly from dating lifestyle to being entrenched in poly identity and it being the only way to have a relationship. Many people are single and dating poly that come here. It just so happens, I think, that couples opening their relationship have more struggle due to the fact that they are two working together. They don't have to work on things with an already established partner.

I don't think starting out poly is different for someone that is single compared to someone that isn't in terms of finding potential partners. Its when you are in it that is different. I think you will find that if you read around here you will find that any of the information discussed is valuable to anyone in relationships.
 
What Redpepper said

RP is right on. I do want to add a caveat. While dating as a single poly is pretty much the same as being single in general, there is the additional level of disclosure. Not only do you have to eventually reveal to a potentially serious partner the usual stuff - kids/no kids, religious or not, want to be legally married or not, lifestyle choices (want to live in a city, be active physically, and so on - you will need to let them know, hey, I'm non-monogamous and want to be polyamorous. It does a level of difficulty as my gaming friends might say.

The other side is that non-monogamy may seriously reduce your potential dating pool. It's a deal breaker for lots of people, maybe most people right now. I personally am fine with this because I don't see myself being monogamous again. A former lover of mine is focusing on monogamy because he feels it probably suits him best. But he has noted to me many times that he leans towards monogamy because 1) he feels little in common with our local poly community - that most folks in our community are a bit too well kooky for him; and 2) being non-monogamous really reduces his dating options dramatically.

So just tuck this into the back of your head. Your experiences may not match this at all but it is something to be aware of.
 
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