Menage a trois (47)

I have played at the person outside the marriage and worked fine for me

M

Space travels in my blood. And there ain't nothing I can do about it.
I know I'm being used, that's okay cause I like the abuse.
I can resist everything except temptation.
It's always funny until someone gets hurt and then it's just hilarious.
Cake or Death?
Life can be beautiful - Joe Gillis

I am a switch essentially where my partner was (initially) Sub. I was lucky enough to find a Domme who I was able to play with fairly regularly at clubs and parties. This fulfilled a need for me that was unavailable in my primary relationship.

Interestingly my partner later emerged to become a Domme herself and began to play with other submissive men.

I found that I couldn't see her as a Domme to me and she would not submit to anyone else but me.

For us, we found that these other relationships worked really well for us and jealousy never came into the equation. I suppose it's a matter of compartmentalising these things really.

I know that if jealousy or insecurity had come into play, then this would have been considered on either side and these scenarios would have been stopped voluntarily without delay. Happily this didn't happen.

It doesn't always happen in that order. I am married and I have a submissive who has been in my life since before my wife and I were married or partnered. All 3 of us are polyamorous (as in the original sense of the word - meaning the capacity to LOVE more than one adult partner). I don't think either of us would marry someone who was monogamous unless they were content in a polyamorous relationship.

Monogamy is not a necessity in civil marriage being polyamorous doesn't contradict our vows, or the legality of our marriage either. My secondary partner was the best man at our wedding. Openly.

Re fulfilment. I think the question is a question which has relevance in monogamy but not in polyamoury. We (meaning my partners and I) don't have more than one relationship because we are unfulfilled by a previous relationship- that's how some monogamous people say THEY operate though - that this is when and why they take interest elsewhere. So it might be hard for mono people who operate that way to understand poly.

Sounds pretty unloving to me and I don't understand why these things don't happen independently if people really are monogamous. But then I cannot understand monogamy full stop because I do not experience it. Taking on another relationship instead doesn't fix problems in an existing relationship and if in a monogamous agreement, seems pretty much guaranteed to exacerbate problems!

We have other relationships if and when loving bonds have been, or are being, formed with someone, or when we have a playmate to enjoy ourselves with. We leave relationships when they are not viable, not because of interest in others. We do not leave one partner we love just because we love another person as well. In pretty much the same way monogamous people don't usually leave partners they love and are happy with, neither do we - it's just that we have the capacity to love more than one at the same time - so we do.

I think it is just not necessary or helpful or relevant for people who are genuinely polyamorous to blame newer relationships on gaps left by failures of older ones! And it's not very flattering for either partner.. I wouldn;t want to get involved with someone citing their need to be in relationship to me as being that there are things absent in their other relationship.. much of relationships are overlapping and I am not a tube of polyfilla!

The phrase having cake and eating it which has been raised by others is just ignorant and again based in monogamous values and thinking, not poly ones.

Poly people are doing what is natural or desired for us with people who are cool with it. It's no more having our cake and eating it than monogamous people having the kind of relationships they want.

This fulfillment via relationships thing is a load of tosh in my opinion. I don't believe we can be fulfilled by others and this is one of the reasons so many people fail at relationships and life because they constantly look to others to fulfil them when it's something we have to do for ourselves.

Bah I get so bored of some of the ignorant and unpleasant stuff people say here about polyamoury sometimes - as mostly it's clear such people don't even understand it and tend to judge everything by (their own?) unpleasant monogamous standards, behaviours or experiences around unfaithfulness, which is just not relevant to us at all.

It's not even relevant to a lot of monogamous people who have far better ethics than that! It's not someone's partner's fault if they are being unfaithful, it's fundamental lack of respect of their dynamic (& partner) on behalf of the unfaithful person. That's NOT monogamy, it's unloving, not loving one!

Ethical multiple relationships are nothing like unethical 'monogamous' people's affairs. Nobody likes deceit, disrespect, having agreements broken, or being dumped for a newer model - whether poly or mono or other. This is not what being in multiple relationships should be like.

Simple answer to your question: Married people who succeed at multiple relationships stay married and have other partners when they are happy in their marriage and also happy having another relationship as well. Simple.

De

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Edited 24 Dec 10, 3:59 PM by Degenerate

Great. Then that's your best way. It's ok for us all to be different - what's impportant is for each of us to find the right kind of relationship with someone with similar needs & wants.

De

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to be honest I don't know of any who have left. But reading other forums and from my experience, people leave because they are unhappy, sex just becomes the excuse to help seal the departure.

If he called you when you were married but he won't leave his wife, that seems ilke a lose lose deal for you. You lose everything and he loses nothing.

I am married, but I have a long-term lover as does my husband, which I guess makes us a Menage-a-quatre. We also all have different playmates.

As Degenerate says, it is a generalisation to assume that one takes a lover because your original relationship is unfulfilling. That is a monogamous point of view, for those of us in poly or open arrangements, we don't feel that having another playmate or relationship in any way detracts or spoils the original one - it is simply adding something else to the mix. It is also a generalisation to assume that people in a non-monogamous relationship are cheating on their partners, although this does happen, I have never been anything but open and truthful with my other half and he with me.

What I enjoy about open is the breadth and depth of experience that it gives me. To use the analogy of having a child, if parents have a child, and then have another, they don't stop loving the first one to love the second, not do they only love the first one exclusively. Love is not a cup of sugar that is used up, it's an ocean that is wide and deep and if you try hard, can expand to encompass more than a single person at a time.

I have often thought that a good open relationship is a sign of a very strong relationship, it means that you must be completely confident with each other if you have no problems with them seeing other people. I'm often told by doomsayers, you can't have your cake and eat it and that my relationship won't last, because I am not mono. But I've been with my (now) husband for 13 years and we have *never* been monogamous, because it doesn't suit either of us. In my opinion, a lot of the issues you read about on Ic boards are when one of the people in the relationship are unhappy with the arrangement in one way or another. But that's just a problem with the relationship, not a problem with the nature of being open or poly. As long as clear boundaries are set and things are always discussed and agreed on, you can never say that there was any deceit.

In a nutshell - do what works for you. It might take you a while to work out what that is. And then don't knock what other people choose and they won't knock you back

Rapunzel - all round bad girl.... Fawcett Hall Lowewood Academy A Kinky Girl's Guide to Life Follow me on Twitter @FawcettHall (if you have nothing better to do!)

Edited 25 Dec 10, 6:19 PM by Rapunzel

I agree, I think this forum by its very nature is more accepting of different views