Ask Lemmy

I was involved in a nonconsensual, clandestine polyamorous relationship once. It sucked, broke my fucking heart.

I worked with a married couple many years back. Then they had a kid. So they split their shifts since daycare costs to damn much for 2 Perkins cooks. So they very little of each other. So they went to an open relationship model because "needs". One of the male managers known for hitting in and fucking all waitresses (because he controlled their schedule...) took the opportunity to start plowing her too. The husband... Thought he had game and thought he could get someone at work. He couldn't. So that had to be a fun dynamic. The husband and wife's manager working side by side with both of them and the manager was having a baby with one of his other conquests that also work there. Their marriage quickly fell apart and people's opinion of her and the manager and the husband took a leap off a cliff. Before all of that they were a very happy couple and great friends to be with. Afterwards they were all insufferable and the child pays for all this.

Knew another couple, married, with for kids. They moved to a open relationship model... Probably for plethora of reasons, Part of me believes that she misses her early twenties party girl that she used to be. Turns out being in mid-30s and having four kids and being married really limits the type of guys that you get. Her former husband moved on with life. And she now has a fifth kid with someone that was a temp boyfriend.

I know of two couples that dabble in it to some extent. One as far as I know is unicorn-hunting, because their rules for it suggest a 3rd member genuinely capturing someone's heart would lead to relationship implosion of epic proportions, and I suspect that couple isn't mature or stable enough to be doing what they're doing without leaving people open for hurt. Not that I have any say in it, lol. But I feel sorry for any thirds that interact with them thinking there's even a chance of them being an equal partner.

The other couple has much better communication skills, and claim they're poly, but as far as I can tell from the outside "poly" has happened as an attempt to save the marriage. Maybe they'll make it work, but I've watched them make some dumb mistakes, and the wife has jealous behaviors when women interact with the husband and a history of bending to his needs before her own so I think even if she says they're poly she might have talked herself into it as a way to attend to him.

I think healthy poly is possible--but it requires extremely mature individuals with exceptional communication skills, and that's rare even in monogamous couples.

I've been in like, 3 or 4 of them so far. I can really see the value in a poly relationship but I find it, that it's incredibly challenging to maintain much less establish one. All of the ones I've been in, was where the individual wanting or orchestrating the poly relationship, was just a flat out cheater who wanted more than they can handle. My limit is no more than 2 other partners. The people I kept finding myself with, practically wanted like several partners too many and it just complicated things.

I'm open to being in a good one but I really don't know nor would I know anything or anyone that'd want a good stable poly relationship.

No real first hand experience. I kinda interacted with people that were /are poly, but wasn't part of their group.

But the thing I noticed about poly groups regarding the kind of stability that would be a success in any objective view, is that there's usually a core few that comprise the true group, with anyone else being kinda replaceable. It's usually either a "throuple", or two pairs, and those core relationships are what really matters when there's any trouble.

Imo, that makes sense. In a real world sense, nobody loves everyone equally. It might get close, but we as a species just aren't that controlled in our emotions. They're shifting and tied to so many different memories that it's barley possible to have comparable levels of love, much less exactly the same.

And, there's the issue of numbers and work. If a couple has X amount of work to maintain, a third person doesn't turn that into X+1, it turns it into X^3, because you have A×B, the first two, then you have A×C, B×C, and, A×B×C. The dynamics of each pair of individuals is the same, but you add the dynamics of the group to that. Add a 4th person, and you get X^4, and so on. So, the larger the group gets, the harder it is to actually maintain every relationship at all, much less equally.

But! I know two poly groups that have been stable for a long time. One since the mid nineties, the other since 2003 (officially, but they got together informally a few years before that). The older group stabilized out at five people back around 98, when a couple that had joined in decided it wasn't working for them.

The other group is essentially a foursome, though they tend to rotate through twosomes over time. Like, one couple spends a few months more focused on each other, then the other two people either do the same or float a little as individuals without as much group interaction. But they're all bisexual as well as poly, so there's that helping out a little; everyone is into everyone romantically and sexually, so there's less chance of someone feeling left out.

Both groups have kids, btw. Which can get a little tough on the kids in school, but damned if it isn't a plus at home. Like, those kids never lack for someone to help them, give them affection or discipline, or anything. The oldest boy from the longer lasting group is out on his own now, and doing well for himself.

The only other poly group I know well enough to have picked up details about their arrangements went back a lot further, back into the sixties when they met. Which is a success, if you ask me, but there's only the one lady left now, and that's fucking brutal to lose three partners that you love like that. I don't know if it's any worse than losing a monogamous partner or not, but holy hell has she been through some pain over the last two decades.

I call them a success though. They went through fourty-plus years together, raised kids, lived life, and stuck together. I didn't meet any of them until one of the guys had a stroke, back before I got hit with the disability stick and had to quit working. I was a CNA, and when he had the next stroke, they asked if I could come back, so I got to know them a good bit. But they'd lost one of their group between times to cancer.

For myself, I don't think I could handle that part. I know that if my wife dies before me, it's going to break me. I can't imagine going through that two or three (or more) times.

Which is probably not the most pleasant way to end this comment, being a bit less happy than maybe you were wanting. But I figure if one group of people can live poly together long enough for that, then polyamory is nothing to dismiss, and it's certainly proof that it can be satisfying and good.

Genuine question. Shouldn't there be love between you and her boyfriend for it to be polyamory ? otherwise isn't it just polygamy ?