How do you have time to be poly?

Spock

New member
Maybe I have an oversubscribed life; married with two kids under 8 and in school. We barely have time for each other after work, homework, and family time, sometimes.

Is it that the poly with kids actually share the kids and so the parents can take a break in order to strengthen their relationship? Not quite poly, but I have a sister in law who helps to watch the kids several times a month just so wife and I can have date nights, which makes it even harder to find time for other people, as well. My wife has considered a 'work-boyfriend' a possibility because then she would have an excuse to spend time with someone without losing time for the kids and me.

Me, I don't have a clue how I'll find time for anyone at all. How do you guys and girls manage?
 
I don't know either. Both me and my gf are married, she has children we both have jobs. Finding the time to establish a new relationship with the texting, the emailing, the trying to go out and share new experiences together. I'm starting to come to the realization that I'm never going to have the full relationship with her that I want. It's going to be more of a fwb type thing even though finding time for for the benefits portion of that is hard even.
 
Me? Be closed while parenting.

Kids take up a lot of time/energy and if partners weren't established already before kids? I just don't want to launch something new right now. Seems easier to wait until my next phase of life when kids are grown.

Galagirl
 
Last edited:
My gf and I do something like you describe with your sister in law. She and her husband have a two year old, I don't have kids or a primary partner. On an average month, I:
- watch her son two evenings and occasionally a weekend day
- hang out at their house for dinner two evenings
- go out with her on a just-us date once
- spend time with her at social events (dance parties, kink parties, etc.) where we get some quality time once or twice

I feel like the time I spend babysitting makes up for the time I take her away from her husband. However, the only reason this works for me is because I genuinely love her son and want to spend lots of time with him. I've known him since the day after he was born. If it weren't for the fact that I genuinely wanted to bond with him, I probably wouldn't be up for watching him nearly as much.

Also, even with that, the limited just-us time we spend together places our relationship strictly in the "secondary" category -- it's not a central aspect of our lives, even though it's important to us.

For context, I also see a couple of other people, and this all balances for me quite well.
 
In my case... no kids (ever, period), no job (highly likely to remain a case of "ever", too). Too little time is just about the least of my concerns - it's an abundant and renewable resource to me. ;)
 
I live with both of mine (as does Phy and LR...and others here) so a lot of our time is amongst the three of us. We (Me, MrS, and Dude) carve out "us two" time from "all together" time. (No kids in our case...but LR has kids and Phy is trying.)
 
We live together and raise the kids together.
When Maca had a girlfriend who didn't live here, we traded off babysitting (she had a child too).
 
I don't have kids, and if I did, I don't think I would be able to live the poly life I'm living now.

That said - even now, with all my time besides working hours my own, I find scheduling a challenge. I always seem to be able to find the time to see lovers and new interests, it's old friends, established relationships, and most importantly my relationship with myself, that suffers from being too busy.
a couple of things:
I try to never say 'I'm sooo busy'. I find it's a kind of self fulfilling thing. If I don't have time for something or someone I just say: I can't then, but I could do it then.

I try to say no every now and then. Very difficult especially with new and interesting and shiny relationships happening, but necessary.

I have lots of friends with kids who 'give' each other a certain amount of nights, evenings, days per month to do as they please while the other stays home with the kids. Could be anything from hanging out with friends to sitting alone in the library. For poly people this could be going on dates.
 
I have a son with autism. He is 7. I have one partner at the moment, I broke up with my last partner at the end of August. We don't live together. He doesn't see me with my son though they did meet once.

My son stays with his dad at weekends or my mum or sister babysit for one of the days. I also see my partner in the day when my son is at school. I saw my last partner every weekend. He lived too far to see during the school day.

Since August, I've been so busy that I don't have time to really start anything new. Maybe in the New Year.
 
I think it partly depends on how involved you want your relationships to be. For those who are more introverted or independent, like me and my long-distance SOs, an intimate relationship can function pretty much like a close friendship. There's no need for frequent contact or regular face-to-face time, and it's okay for the level of contact to wax and wane a bit depending on everyone's personal circumstances. Admittedly, this also has to do with our kooky relationship views, which don't draw a clear-cut line between friendships and intimate relationships.

I'm childfree, but I'd imagine some poly people with kids might treat their relationships more like common friendships too (in terms of involvement/time spent together anyway), voluntarily or not.
 
Last edited:
I live with Murf approx 12-15 days a month. If my children are off school they come along. Moose is 10 and Squirrel is 6.

For example I spent yesterday til this morning at Murf's and Butch had the kids. This weekend Murf is working and Butch is off. Tuesday the kids and I will spend the night at Murf's since the kids are off for Thanksgiving. We will come back to the house I share with Butch. Thursday we will have turkey and etc with Butch and Murf before Butch has to go to work. Then we, Murf kids and I, will go to his parents. Then we will spend the weekend with Murf. He will watch the kids while I work Friday evening. Monday we will head home.

Murf works every other weekend. His weekend off we are together. Butch works two weekends and then gets one off. Mid week days off during the school year if both men are off then then I go see Murf solo. If not he comes here. During vacations and breaks the kids come along.

Before the kids met Murf (he didn't meet them until I knew he was a keeper) my 19 yo would watch them. But he has since went away to college.
 
I know what you mean about being overcommitted: on top of working and being married and having two children growing into and through their teens, Vix and I spend a lot of time on our shared avocation, which involves time with various portions of a big and diverse community.

Vix doesn't have a full-time job - she had been a homeschooling mom until last year, then spent time traveling and visiting Doc and developing her part in the avocation to something like part-time work; she's also looking to develop a tele-working kind of career for herself.

Anyway, Vix has had more time than I have for developing relationships. That once might have been An Issue for me, but I don't really fuss about it, now. She is mindful that I need time for myself and other relationships, even if that time is necessarily limited; I"m happy to give her the opportunity to travel and explore, since it meets many of her needs.

In answer to the more basic question, what I've come to is the realization that being poly doesn't really take time at all: it's more of an attitude toward the world and toward other people, a way of being in the world. In my case, it's also an unconventional way of understanding what my marriage to Vix means.

It's developing actual relationships that takes time and energy, both of which really are in limited supply. I've really scaled back my expectations of such relationships, enjoying them for what they are and what they can be under current conditions . . . though without placing arbitrary limits on what they might be!

Full-time "romantic" commitment isn't really in the cards, but all manner of degrees and kinds of intimacy may be possible short of that.

Just consider that other poly folk tend to be very busy, too!
 
Full-time "romantic" commitment isn't really in the cards, but all manner of degrees and kinds of intimacy may be possible short of that.
Unfortunately it's the full time romantic commitment that I'm in this for and there is simply no way I see that happening right now. I don't have the desire to just date random women or nsa or fwb. Those things just don't do it for me. I guess if I had known how hard the time and "life" aspect of it was I probably wouldn't have even tried to date somebody else.
 
Unfortunately it's the full time romantic commitment that I'm in this for and there is simply no way I see that happening right now. I don't have the desire to just date random women or nsa or fwb. Those things just don't do it for me. I guess if I had known how hard the time and "life" aspect of it was I probably wouldn't have even tried to date somebody else.

I wasn't thinking "fwb" or "nsa" or, heaven forbid, "random women" . . . just different degrees and kinds of friendship and affection and companionship. For me, at least, dropping narrow categories and their expectations has made it more possible to be poly and yet sane.

Not entirely possible. Just more possible. ;)
 
P has difficulty with this as well. It doesn't help that his home with me is 1.5 hours away from his home with M1 (and his job is closer to his home there). When he's home with me, he has to leave for work by 6:30am, and he's not home until 7pm. Not much time for ANYTHING.

He has kids as well (although one is grown), and finding time for everything makes it hard to make time for himself.

No good answer for you, I'm afraid. Just some sympathy and understanding from this end.
 
My ex h and I attempted poly back in 1999-2000 when our kids were only 10, 13 and 15. I was a homeschooling mom and the ex worked full time and had a long commute. When we decided to open our relationship (as Unicorn Hunters, I am not proud to say), the woman we found lived in Montreal, a 6 hour drive from our state.

We met her through a shared hobby. But that drive was killer. It ended up taking him away from our home and kids twice a month for 3 day weekends. It was also expensive, the gas, plus the wining and dining and other things he wanted to pay for, for her. I grew resentful of being left behind with 3 kids, a dog, 5 cats, and all the home maintenance work he was "unable" to do.

I had "permission" to see others, but, like GalaGirl, I just didn't feel motivated, since my kids and their schooling, hobbies and sports, etc., took up most of my time. I had other hobbies I wanted to pursue for my own benefit, which were more compelling than trying to cruise for lovers. Back then the internet was in its infancy and I wasn't about to troll Craigslist.

So, I didn't fully go for poly until my ex and I split in 2008. By then the kids were basically independent, and I was only working parttime. Of course, I was at that point, 54 years old. But I don't regret waiting to practice polyamory until my kids needed me less. When I do something, I am all in. I was a fulltime mom, now I am 5 years into a relationship with a woman and 2 years into a relationship with a guy.

As for my ex? He kept in touch with that gf he got in 1999 (even though I "vetoed" her) and 6 mos after he and I split, she moved in with him. They aren't poly though.
 
I've got two kids under 5. For now my husband and I trade off time taking care of the kids. My youngest still needs me at bedtime, so I don't leave the house until she's asleep, which still gives me a couple of hours to socialize. And every few weekends I take the kids out of the house for a few hours so he and his girlfriend (who also has kids) can have some time alone.

It works for us. And more importantly, it works for our kids.
 
I wasn't thinking "fwb" or "nsa" or, heaven forbid, "random women" . . . just different degrees and kinds of friendship and affection and companionship. For me, at least, dropping narrow categories and their expectations has made it more possible to be poly and yet sane.
I think I understand what you mean. As a relationship anarchist, I also like the idea of dropping narrow categories and their expectations, and instead just letting each relationship evolve naturally into whatever form makes sense to us. I don't get why lack of full-time romantic commitment has to mean "fwb" or "nsa" - there are many shades of grey when it comes to relationship styles!

I think it's important to understand there are different types of commitment - commitment to sharing a life together, commitment to treating each other as a top priority, commitment to spend X amount of time together, or just commitment to maintaining a relationship as long as it works, etc. You can take any combination of these. For me, the last kind of commitment is all I need. We value our relationships and intend to make them work for as long as possible, but meanwhile, our relationships may look like "just friendship" from the outside. But we don't care whether our relationships fit in the society's narrow categories, as long as we're happy. :p
 
Last edited:
I think I understand what you mean. As a relationship anarchist, I also like the idea of dropping narrow categories and their expectations, and instead just letting each relationship evolve naturally into whatever form makes sense to us. I don't get why lack of full-time romantic commitment has to mean "fwb" or "nsa" - there are many shades of grey when it comes to relationship styles!

Relationship anarchy! I like that.

I'd been trying to come up with a term for this idea, myself.

I may step on some toes with this - apologies in advance! - but I've been thinking of drawing from a half-remembered second-hand knowledge of radical theories about identity by coining the term "relationship-queer".

The half-remembered bit - which I associate with the term "queer theory" - is that gender identity is a wide field between the poles of masculine and feminine, a field on which we can and should play freely.

I'm not gender-queer, myself, but maybe I'm relationship-queer. I've written about this elsewhere, but I imagine a wide field (or space, or n-dimensional space) of possibilities . . . etc.

"Relationship anarchy" might accomplish the same thing, but maybe with overtones of danger . . .
 
Last edited:
Back
Top