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comment by elizabeth
elizabeth  ·  1470 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What it’s like to isolate with your girlfriend and her other boyfriend

I've been hanging around a bunch of poly people in the recent years, and I would say most are V-shaped. Or W or something. I'd say everyone is friends, and date around but once a relationship becomes more serious they usually like to meet with the new partners. And sometimes do become good friends.

What I find tough with polyamory is the constant negotiating of boundaries and expectations. In a traditional relation, of course that's important too. But you already have a base framework that you can adapt to, and the situation is not shifting as constantly with the coming and going of new interests. Poly is like playing the relationships game on hard mode. My friend when on a date with a poly person recently, and was just overwhelmed by the amount of disclaimers and current relationship structure explaining that was necessary before even starting anything. It's like the communication part becomes a full time job.

Maybe it's just my personal bias, but the almost therapy-like language poly people use to discuss their relations would put me in a perpetual state of eye-rolling if it was my life. I'm super happy for all my friends that seem to be doing poly right and loving it, but from the outside it seems like more trouble than it's worth.





user-inactivated  ·  1470 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Poly is like playing the relationships game on hard mode.

My thoughts too - I have some friends who are in these relationships and I just do not get it. I don't want to talk anyone out of it, and if it makes them happy I'm all for it but the drama oh the drama.

Plus as you say, there's so much to try and understand before you even get to know someone in that setup.

Matched with one or two when I was using tinder and we would start talking then they'd have the spiel that was very kind of them to produce, but it also served as a mighty signal for me to not go any further.

ilex  ·  1462 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah I would feel weird not being able to at least have a cup of tea with serious metamours, and I think any relationship where one meta actively dislikes another is probably not going to work out long term.

Monogamous relationship assumptions get to be unstated because a lot of society is structured to expect them. Figuring out how to do polyamory well takes a lot of talking but once you figure it out, it's pretty mundane, at least in my experience?

user-inactivated  ·  1469 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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