Being in a city with a big queer/alt/goth/weirdo population helps. And poly groups aren't necessarily more sexually active or adventurous than anyone else. Even ENM relationships might involve just having more than one partner, or having a FWB, or picking people up at bars once in a while. Swingers, Kinksters, and some BDSM communities tend to have more sex, or sexual play. There's some overlap between poly and enm and kinksters, but it's not 100%.
Being in a city with a big queer/alt/goth/weirdo population helps.
I live in Protestant Rust Belt Hell. For 90% of the people I know, living is working, & working is living. I have never been able to do anything remotely interesting, or enjoyable with my life.
I don't understand how poly relationships don't devolve into jealosies and arguments myself. It's hard enough having a romantic relationship between two people more must complicate it
It’s hard enough having a romantic relationship between two people
well the other realtionships don't have to be romantic. They can be sexual, they can be about platonic affection, they can be about kinks your other partners don't want to engage in. Working relationships like that often have very clearly seperated roles for different partners, and i don't know any that have worked out long-term where both nesting partners slept with the same people. That idea that polycules are a bunch of horny orgy goers constantly fucking everybody in the polycule is one that's pretty far removed from how polyamory usually plays out when it plays out successfully.
Although i have to admit that i don't see any of that working within the norms and expectations and cultural baggage our society has for straight couples. This mostly tends to work for queer people who didn't have normative ideas of their preferred kind of romance shoved down their throat their entire lifes and had to find out their own way to make love and sex and romance work by just trying things out and coming to grips with that they want and feel.
Most of the poly people i know aren't particularly sexually active, they tend to be on the ace spectrum and they're just in a relationship where it's ok that one of them has a play partner to do a BDSM scene once in a while and sometimes cybers with me and maybe we have sex occassionally and the other has a cuddle buddy who she sometimes brings over to have a transbian slumber party. I don't think that's kinkier or more adventurous than what a lot of monogamous couples i know get up to.
idk maybe this whole stuff is actually easier when you're less horny. Like, i don't get jealous at all, at most i get envious. But envy is a different thing than jealousy, it's "i want that, too", not "you're not allowed to do that with anybody but me".
Edit: Also, almost all working poly relationships i know of have been / are between queer people. Straight couples (or straight guy / bi girl couples) seem to really struggle to make it work.
A lot of folx around me are in poly/enm relationships and all I can think is "Damn it's like gotta lie on my dating resume, too."
How the fuck do people find these things? The most sexually active/adventurous people I know are people who are just monogamously married.
This shit might as well be fucking Neverland to me.
Being in a city with a big queer/alt/goth/weirdo population helps. And poly groups aren't necessarily more sexually active or adventurous than anyone else. Even ENM relationships might involve just having more than one partner, or having a FWB, or picking people up at bars once in a while. Swingers, Kinksters, and some BDSM communities tend to have more sex, or sexual play. There's some overlap between poly and enm and kinksters, but it's not 100%.
I live in Protestant Rust Belt Hell. For 90% of the people I know, living is working, & working is living. I have never been able to do anything remotely interesting, or enjoyable with my life.
I'm sorry, bro. I hope you can get out some day.
Protestant Work Ethic and its consequences. :capitalist-laugh: :you-are-a-serf:
I was in an enm relationship a couple years back and it was the most exhausting thing I've ever done. I don't recommend it.
I don't understand how poly relationships don't devolve into jealosies and arguments myself. It's hard enough having a romantic relationship between two people more must complicate it
well the other realtionships don't have to be romantic. They can be sexual, they can be about platonic affection, they can be about kinks your other partners don't want to engage in. Working relationships like that often have very clearly seperated roles for different partners, and i don't know any that have worked out long-term where both nesting partners slept with the same people. That idea that polycules are a bunch of horny orgy goers constantly fucking everybody in the polycule is one that's pretty far removed from how polyamory usually plays out when it plays out successfully.
Although i have to admit that i don't see any of that working within the norms and expectations and cultural baggage our society has for straight couples. This mostly tends to work for queer people who didn't have normative ideas of their preferred kind of romance shoved down their throat their entire lifes and had to find out their own way to make love and sex and romance work by just trying things out and coming to grips with that they want and feel.
Most of the poly people i know aren't particularly sexually active, they tend to be on the ace spectrum and they're just in a relationship where it's ok that one of them has a play partner to do a BDSM scene once in a while and sometimes cybers with me and maybe we have sex occassionally and the other has a cuddle buddy who she sometimes brings over to have a transbian slumber party. I don't think that's kinkier or more adventurous than what a lot of monogamous couples i know get up to.
idk maybe this whole stuff is actually easier when you're less horny. Like, i don't get jealous at all, at most i get envious. But envy is a different thing than jealousy, it's "i want that, too", not "you're not allowed to do that with anybody but me".
Edit: Also, almost all working poly relationships i know of have been / are between queer people. Straight couples (or straight guy / bi girl couples) seem to really struggle to make it work.
:michael-laugh: