Category: Dating and Relationships
I just read an article that there has been an increasing trend towards monogomy with the exception of online flirting or cyberscrewing etc. Couples who agree to be "monogomit" agree to be faithful physically, however are allowed to flirt and do whatever they want with people online. What are your thoughts about this? I would post the article here, but it's too long.
Any agreement between a couple is an agreement.
If that agreement works, it is good.
I personal wouldn't care if my girlfriend/wife flirted without an agreement, because of my way of life.
If I thought as most do, I'd still not see harm in it, due to it not being actual until she physically does something about it. Kind of like watching porn I'd say.
Harm is only done to the party that perceives they have been harmed.
First of all, the word is monogamy or monogamic.
I think one can have an affair of the heart even if he or she is not getting physically involved with another person. And I think having phone sex or ciber sex or any kind of flirting outside the main relationship can be harmful because the person doing the flirting or phone sex or ciber sex with someone else is giving time to oother people that they should be giving to their spouse or partner. I've known plenty of couples where one party is hurt because their partner is emotionally involved with someone else. The person having the affairs can tell themselves they are not hurting their partner because they have not been physically unfaithful, but if you are being emotionally unfaithful then you are indeed hurting your relationship. This kind of thing wasn't possible decades ago and today's young couples just starting out in relationships probably think it is perfectly normal and OK to do this, but if your partner thinks you have an emotional commitment to them and then finds out you are flirting all over the place, they will be hurt.
I disagree with what Becky says, when she generalizes that everyone will be hurt if their partner flirts with others, when they're with someone.
as Wayne so accurately stated, if a couple mutually agrees that being emotionally and physically invested in others is fine, then, there's no harm done. if, however, one person lies to the other and decides to sneak around, that's definitely considered harmful.
No, I think that's not all right if you're agreeing to be m. Like wayne said, if you're the type of person to AGREE to that beforehand, then I uess...Whatever floats your boat. But for me, personally, you're either monogamous or not. Emotional affairs can be tricky deamons. I know that all too well. Not going to say much more than, I've been involved with someone who felt it was ok to cyberflirt, have phone sex, etc. with someone who was half-way around the world, and just because the physical act of sex was not involved doesn't mean I was hurt any less by the connection they ended up having. As a matter of fact, I'll go as far as to say that an emotional affair can become more destructive to a relationship than a tranditonal sexual affair. Because, some would agree upon the idea that sex is just sex. it's a physical pleasure. But once emotions are involved, things get way more complicated.
I have to disagree with you, wayne, that cyberflirting and cybersex as well as phone sex are the same as porn. They are inherently different. Think about it. Watching porn is basically watching a movie. You're not interacting with the tars of the film or erotica. You dont' know their real names, you don't know their preferences, you dotn' have the chance to get to know them personally. Therefore, the porn stars are not a real threat to a fully monogamous relationship. When you're interacting with someone online, you get to know them overtime, even if casually. The point is, you're actually interacting with them. Not just masturbating to images on your screen or sounds coming out of yoru speaker, that millions might be masturbating to as well. I understand that you have a freer outlook on the whole issue of relationships, etc. But even from a purely technical standpoint, saying that porn is the same as cyber chatting or cyber sex is technically incorrect. You interact with one and you only fantasize to the image or the sound of a porn star without really getting to know them. Two very different things, and to monogamous couples, one can do a lot more damage than the other, if the couple agrees to be fully exclusive, of course.
I find this topic interesting and have my own spin on it, I guess.
As to Becky's comments, you're probably right about the younger ones, but then again they grew up with the new dimension we call social networking and online life whereas the rest of us spent a good part of our formative years / misspent youth with no Internet.
But one rule I personally follow is if you wouldn't do it offline then don't do it online. My wife has used that word 'affair of the heart' also, regarding those types of emotional connections and in her mind anyway they need not even be sexual relationships just something emotionally deep like you all are talking about. Now flirting is not deep but then again I don't do any of that in offline life with other people. Call it old-school but I thought it bad form to flirt with someone when you're in a committed relationship.
I tend to agree with Bernadetta, and hence disagree with most women my age and up who have taken the Christian / Femitheist Kool-Aid, regarding porn. I'm not a consumer of it, though I'll admit some of the online stories I've read have made me laugh more than get off.
But I know many marriages that were broken up because she caught him masturbating or looking at a Penthouse, and took this as cheating.
I can see how some would look at objections to this online flirting business as yet more of the same on and on prudish type controlling fetishistic behaviors, where one party has a real thing for controlling the thoughts and desires of the other. However, Bernadetta and Becky have several valid points.
This is why even those of us who didn't use corporal punishment with our kids could be led to whip the freshman for pulling the fire alarm a hundred times at 3 in the morning. people are so obsessed with controlling how others think and desire sexually that when valid voices like Bernadetta's or Becky's come up, it's easy if not careful for people to dismiss it as the prude (freshman) yet again pulling the fire alarm at 3 in the morning. Only this time there's a fire and the building will burn down.
I know people in offline life who, if they saw this thread, because of decades of control efforts by various groups, would just blow this whole thing off as yet again another crusade for the Puritans / femitheists and what have you, completely ignoring the very valid points by Becky and Bernadetta. And there the house burns down.
You both are right, emotional interactions like this always really complicate situations, and can prove to be really difficult to extricate oneself from.
And also, again maybe I'm old school, but I don't see the point in flirting with another person while in a committed monogamous relationship.
Anyone else remember the extortion tales of the 90s, where some guy would go online and cyber with other guys pretending to be a woman and then write back to him threatening to send the transcript to his wife unless he paid up? Quite a few cases came and went in that regard: that or someone would so-called out the participant as gay when he had been cybering with what he thought was a girl.
My opinion, as one who has renounced any and all desires to drink any of the Puritan ChristoFemitheist Kool Aid is, you're playing with treacherous fire if you do this sort of thing. It's too bad the fire alarm has been pulled so many times, for so many silly things over the years, that most probably won't listen to sound reason like what was in Becky's and Bernadetta's posts.
Okay, I'll concede that point. I hadn't thought about the emotional aspects.
I did say it could be harmful, and that my views were not like others
Here is why I didn't see how cyber, or online sex could be tied up in to emotion if all it was was cyber, online flirting, and such.
I can't get emotionally involved with someone I've never spoken to on a non sexual bases. In order for me to think emotional, the affair would have to be more concrete.
We'd talk about our lives, things we liked, places we'd like to visit, and general things that let you know you could really enjoy meeting this person and spending some time with them providing what they've told you is real.
When I thought about flirting, and teasing, I think about what I sometimes do with Anthony. I am just teasing.
Any of you that use public chat know what I mean.
When it stays at that level it is much like watching porn.
Lastly, I understand how sexual hot some people find these things, but me, I can't get interested, even physically with someone I'm typing fast to. Not even if we are on a phone, and the phone aspect was not talked about here, so I assumed it was only text flirtation.
You could get attached to someone via emails, but again, I'd need more meat, not just talking about sex or sexual conversations.
If you add a voice to the mix, and as you pointed out, start connecting with that person, you'd be 100% correct. That is an affair, not a text flirtation. .
here's the thing, though. emotions aren't complicated. people complicate things.
when someone gets hurt, upon hearing their partner flirted with another person, especially when there has been no prior agreement that they'd practice monogamy, that person is complicating things.
how, you ask? by blowing something out of proportion, when they didn't even bother to discuss it with their partner from the start.
I tend to adopt the same policy as leo. If I wouldn't cheat offline, I wouldn't do so online. Yes, I personally feel it is cheating. Now, if you and your partner agree that it is not a problem so be it. Now let the margorp-bashing begin! :)
I just think that if you are in a committed relationship, you should spend your time and emotional energy on that person. If you are busy flirting online or in real life or having phone sex or whatever with others, then you are not really committed to your partner. If you don't like working on making and keeping your committed relationship good, then get out of it and pursue flirting with as many partners as you want. But don't even bother pretending to be in a committed relationship if you are out there looking for other people to make you happy.
I also agree with Leo's policy. I am exactly what I am online as off.
In this case, the question is tied to couples agreeing to do this. That to me is the root, or starting point, agreement.
Flirting and emotion are different as well. If you complicate flirting with emotion, that is were things would get sticky, but teasing seems non emotional to me.
I forgot to say that I also adopt leo's policy, in that I'm the same offline as I am online.
and, yes, as has been said many times, recently, by myself and Wayne, this all boils down to agreement.
so, Becky, just cause you, personally, feel the meaning of the word "commitment" is different than he and I do, doesn't mean we're wrong. it's simply a different way of thinking about things, and, as someone said earlier, a much more open way to look at relationships.
I'm getting sick and tired of the perception that those like myself, who have a more open view, are shot down, simply cause such a view is unpopular, and people couldn't ever imagine being this way themselves.
several years ago, I felt the same way as most of you, with regards to commitment meaning only being with one person. however, life experience, getting older, and socializing with all kinds of people, has encouraged me to really think about things, in what I consider to be a much healthier way.
I've had bad legs for my entire life, and always will. according to society, when I'm in a relationship with someone, even if I'm unable to perform sexually for a time, I'm supposed to tell the person I'm with, "you're with me, and only me, so you just have to deal with the fact I can't perform sexually. don't even think about getting your needs met elsewhere."
that, in my view, is beyond selfish and inconsiderate. there's nothing fair, or right, about me allowing a person to suffer, just cause I have to go without.
to me, monogamy is just that, one on one committed relationships. if you have agreed to have syber sex, sexting, video or facetime sex, whatever, then, that's not monogamy. it's something else. I once went out with this guy. I found out he was sexting and Skype chatting up other women. he insisted that there was something wrong with me because it was all just normal. BS, I say. when your man is spending more time chatting with other women than he is with you then, there is a problem. when you are trying to get his attention sexually and he is to interested in his computer then, there is a big problem. I must admit, I would be upset if I walked in on my partner jerking off on Skype or facetime with some woman.
I know several married women who engage in this stuff so, it's not just men either. I think, perhaps, it makes them feel sexy again or something? personally, I don't get it myself. if I am in a committed relationship then, that's what it should be, committed, one on one.
JMHO
What I am about to say only applies where treachery is not involved: meaning the one person violating an agreement they'd both discussed beforehand.
Dana, this is quite unusual. I've yet to meet a man who refuses real world sexual atentions from a woman in lieu of fake ones from a computer. Thanks to your last post, I now feel a bit like a relic. lol.
My only experience with this has been men who used porn because she was not sexually interested in him, and due to her hardcore sexual denial fetish, which is in fact a form of BDSM, she got angry that he met his biological needs elsewhere. So I have no frame of reference for someone so obtusely connected as to prefer electronic virtual stimulation over the real thing. Call me old school, but I thought sex was supposed to feel good, not virtually feel virtually good. lol.
But to address Chelsea's couple of points.
You're right that people complicate things, And it's my contention, especially regarding heteronormative women and emotions, that they do so by accident. Meaning, maybe they set out to be just fine about the partner's activities, but something trips a trigger, she doesn't know why she feels the way she does, and in Western society where feelings generally trump rationalism, she reacts. Blown out of proportion is probably an apt description, but again, feelings in Western society very often trump rationalism. Ever been asked the probing questions by a significant other, or maybe a parent, or close friend, and you know by how they phrased that question they have an answer they want?
What people mean by things is often so different, not just between the genders (in a heteronormative situation at least), but backgrounds and other factors play into this. And unfortunately or otherwise, sex and relationships is one of those places where society has got a lot of funny ideas, a lot of fairy tales, Santa Clauses and devils, and people usually buy all of that fiction without even thinking about it. A woman finds out a guy has a centerfold from Sports Illustrated's March Madness, and she immediately assumes he must be "addicted" to porn. Nevermind that addiction generally only gets applied to things society doesn't like at the time. But she doesn't believe this for any rational reason: she just saw Oprah, or pick your religious program, where everyone started getting all excited over porn like a pack of lemmings at feeding time. Add to that they throw in the mix things like serial killers, whose juries didn't believe a word they said, somehow become credible experts on porn addiction. And she just bought the whole Kool Aid store. All of this fails to compute in a rational mind. But rational is absolutely not what people usually are in these situations.
So Chelsea, yes, you're right: it's not the emotions that complicate things, we all have them. People do.
So I have two choices in a world like this: I can try and find only the free thinkers of society, those outside the mainstream and not consuming the Christofemitheist Kool Aid, or I can, being the rational party here, do what it takes to maintain and navigate with what we're dealing with. People like us who are rational are the stable ones here. Think of it this way. You've got a person with some kind of condition which makes them do things eratically, if there is a specific kind of a trigger. Say some epileptics who, if they see flashing lights, will have a seizure.
So if you are in relationship with this person, you'll probably do a combination of things: you'll not set off any flashing lights when they're around, and if they do experience flashing lights / a seizure you'll probably try and help them through it.
I see this Christofemitheist irrationalism sort of like a mental condition. Something sets it off, and the person simply goes eratic. Sorry if this term is out of date or not politically correct, but they are simply unstable. And deep down they know it, and that is what makes them insecure on some level. So someone like you comes along, and you present a different way to live. Makes sense from a rational standpoint: human beings are diverse creatures, and we're no longer bound by the biological constraints which held us to specific gender roles and expectations for relationships. We have the vestigial parts left over, sort of an appendix if you will, but in a postmodern industrialized society ideas like yours and Wayne's make sense.
Now they also "threaten" (in quotes) the already-unstable situation I mentioned earlier, because people in that situation just aren't very stable anyhow.
But I don't see Bernadetta or Becky as acting in this way at all. They're making some coherent arguments for the mainstream view. And honestly while their arguments don't really apply to yours or Wayne's way of doing things, they are sound as it pertains to the unstable nature of most irrational people and their emotions. Just like making sure the lights don't flicker when the epilectic who has that condition with flashing lights is around. I know places where they've changed out the fire alarm systems for just that purpose.
The difference is that the epilectic is dealing with a physical problem and so isn't attached to it emotionally. You have no people running around saying everyone should be like that. In order for the irrational types to feel secure, though, they have to have a herd. And if you basically look and even sound like them but aren't them, something akin to xenophobia is likely to kick in and hence the responses you get from some people. It feels personal to you, but it's mainly personal about them and their environment.
This I took decades to finally figure out, and it provides the best explanation for otherwise zoo-like behaviors.
But if you really look at Bernadetta's and Becky's posts, they aren't really being irrational like that. They even acknowledge your way of doing things, and that if both parties are really on the same page, you're good. Hard as it may be, you can't really confuse Becky or Bernadetta with the irrationals. My only addition to this is I wouldn't ever, in your situation, take the word of most people when it comes to how they'll handle their emotions. Not until you have seen them react when taken off guard by something, or how well they respond to new ideas. Otherwise, they may tell you they can handle it, even want for themselves to be able to handle it. But like the chimpanzee desperate to get that last banana, they'll be frantic, all over the place and upset when something actually does happen.
I look at it like this: maybe you should be able to, just like you maybe should be able to leave your door unlocked or walk through the rough side of town at 3 A.M., but in most cases you can't, so be safe.
I see what you're saying, leo, about not taking people at their word when they say certain things, and believe me, I've learned that lesson quite well.
for instance, I know that, when I'm told, "it's easy for you to say you're all for being in an open relationship," such people clearly haven't experienced anything that might encourage them to see things similarly (whether it be due to being someone's caregiver for an extended period of time, a medical issue that prevents them from being able to perform sexually, or something else entirely).
so, although it seems like I, too, am taking this personally, I'm not. I'm simply responding to what's said, and since I have a strong personality, it can be interpreted differently, depending on who you are/how you react to discussions being had.
the situation Dana describes about a man going for virtual stimulation over the real thing, is one I don't, for the life of me, understand, either.
Regarding Dana's post, I think it must be that virtual stimulation is just easier than one-on-one real sex. So, it's the lazy way out. Plus it requires no emotional commitment, so another bonus for those who don't deal well with emotional commitments.
Leo, thanks for sticking up for me. I had decided to just continue reading this thread but not contribute anymore to it because I know my ideas are old fashioned and not popular, but I had to say thanks for speaking much more elequently than I. Plus, I wanted to put my two
cents in about the men who would rather look at porn than engage in real sex.
Well I have taken it personally before I came to realize what we're dealing with. And this isn't just sexual things, but any other strongly held emotions that are supposed to be so-called healthy responses, which are basically the herd instinct of most people.
I remember visiting my parents' place way out in the middle of nowhere, a few years after they moved out, and for the first time in my life ran into cattle: herds of them! Well probably it was all one herd, but anyway they were reacting very much like most people do: milling around, making a lot of noise, competing for resources. And just like most people when it comes to new ideas, I was told these beasts would go half mad with fright if they experienced a new sensation they weren't used to: the flash of a camera, an unusual noise. Apparently that coffee grinder incident from the movie City Slickers was not too far off base.
Anyway I was told once they get going, they'll start stampeding. It's not like they will deliberately seek me out and stomp on me, it's just they'll start stomping around everywhere and I will simply be collateral.
This I think is what happens frequently to any of us presenting a new idea, either something we're interested in or simply curious about.
The "Why do you need to know that?" or "Don't you know those people are ..." types of responses are just this type of stomping around.
And I don't care how much a freethinker any of us is, we all like company. And none of us like getting stampeded. So if you've figured this much out, kudos to you. I was in my mid 30s before this started to codify into something coherent and it's only now I'm where I am in life that the stomping around by most people, while irritating, is less personal to me than it was.
Cattle, too, get rounded up, had a brand put on them, their best weapons removed, and last but not least, at least for the "men" of the group, castrated. Sound familiar with a lot of these ideologies where all these upset people come from? A virgin or a eunuch are often the best defenders of any ideology that seeks to control how others do things.
Just try and stay out of the way of getting stomped. lol
better yet, learn how to not take being stomped on personally, and you'll be just fine.
I'll follow that up with a curiosity, though. Becky, if you feel you have something to contribute to a discussion, yet, don't wanna do so cause your views are old fashioned, or people will present totally different perspectives, or challenge you in some other way, what good are your opinions?
all I'm saying, is, discussion is great. keeping quiet cause you don't feel your views will be accepted by others, or for any other reason, really, is rather silly.
I also don’t see your views as old fashioned, obviously, they are not, because the board agrees with you.
Chelsea and I saw and took the first poster at face value. We saw that couples were agreeing this wasn’t an affair. That to us was the trigger.
I personally didn’t see how it was that they were paying more attention to the computer over the real thing. I didn’t see how it was emotionally tied.
Sending some girl a cyber kiss, and her sending me one back isn’t emotional at all to me, it is entertainment.
Even if it got were we were on the webcam, the poster didn’t say the party’s were doing this all the time, with the same person, and not being interested in the spouse at all.
If any relationship gets to a point where anything is more important them the partner, you’ve got more of an issue than some cyber play, you aren’t interesting period.
That is not the fault of the computer, nor the person on the other end, that is an in house problem, and if it isn’t the computer, it will be the television, his car, her bridge game. Your relationship is on the rocks.
Like when I read the Playboy magazine, I don’t start lusting after these women over the one I can have, the magazine is entertainment, and has great articles. Same with that woman online.
We agreed it was fine to play, we didn’t agree it was fine to have an affair.
I guess, and I have said this many times, people need to possess each other, or they don’t feel safe. I personally don’t need it.
Hopefully when the itch gets bad enough, she’ll jump off the computer, and let me scratch it. If not, it is time to move on, wouldn't you say?
I'd say it's a combination of people needing to feel secure, along with insisting that they also need to have possession over their partner. those two things present, what, in my eyes, is a false sense of security, but what, to most, would be seen as true stability.
Maybe so. Sort of like, what is mine is mine, and I don't want anyone else getting any sort of pleasure, even if it never goes anyplace, from mine.
This is not a wrong view, just not for me.
I start to feel like I'm expected to report when people start doing this to me. Even if they don't expect me to report, it makes me uncomfortable.
I don't want to know your every move, nor that you are having lunch with Bob, but you assure me it is business, and such things.
I don't want to know who was on the phone. If it is something a person wants to share they will, because that person said something that was of interest to me, not just that, oh, I was on the computer chatting with James, but it is nothing.
I only want to know when it gets to be something or is interesting.
Dude, you should see how this guy sends a cyber kiss! Damn, let me show you. Lol.
Chelse, I agree. Of course, if somebody doesn't wish to contribute for whatever reason they shouldn't have to. That beeing said, I sometimes feel that my views are old fassioned and I still post. It comes down to confidence.
Sometimes I don't add my post to a topic simply because I don't feel like dealing with the bullshit. I have posted my feelings on this topic more than once and really can't find anything else to say. I wanted to thank Leo for understanding my opinion and should have stopped there.
I agree monogamous views are far from old-fashioned, they're the norm. And, I should clarify and say that monogamy doesn't necessarily imply ownership, just that is what current anthropological theory seems to point to as a basis for its beginnings, and for some very practical reasons.
Also I have no experience except the modern so-called old-fashioned (but the popular majority) of serial monogamy.
See how people react to something as extreme as Tigar Woods, or less extreme as Anthony Wiener and you'll see just how popular monogamy / serial monogamy is, with all the cultural constraints to support it.
Wayne, I feel the same way as you do, about not needing to know things that others would wanna know, from a partner.
if a person wants to tell me that Jim made them think about something differently than they used to, or something else entirely, that's all well and good. however, they should never feel obligated to do so, for any reason.
Becky, as was said, your opinion is the norm, if you will. it seems you just don't like getting into heated discussions, and to each their own.
I just wanted to bring that up regarding opinions, as I feel it's a crucial part of life to participate in. I'm not saying one has to always be outspoken, but that at least on occasion, is, and should be, recommended.
About Tiger Woods.
I think though he should have handle things differently, was not an extreme, but a product of trying to please the public. He has learned better, still likes his women, but does it in the correct fashion.
His wife, as I see it deprived him of herself after she figured she had he locked in. That wasn’t fair.
Instead of running about with her mother, and such, she should have been traveling with her husband, so that he didn’t have to seek companionship after work.
She knew his needs, I’d be willing to bet, but instead of the press seeing that, all they could see was he was cheating on her.
Was it correct for her to not be available, and for him to just put his needs away? The answer to that is yes, only because of popular opinion. This is the reason he was diagnosed with sex addiction.
Now that he’s back single, he is satisfying his addiction, but you know what? The public is mute on this point. Why, because he’s not married.
Does the man have an addiction, or is he just a healthy male that enjoys female companionship after a great day?
If the man was say, from Spain, or France, nothing would have been said.
I know, I stick up for him every time his name gets mentioned in this contests. Smile.
I want to say just a couple of things here.
First but not necessarily most important: validating or invalidating someone's opinion based on how willing they are to fight fire with fire is akin to equating volume with validity. It doesn't wash. If I came in here, made a bunch of pretty strong points and then didn't feel like arguing them, that doesn't make my points any less valid and it doesn't make me a coward. It simply makes me a person not prone to debate, and heaven knows there are many such people. It looks as if Becky is one of them.
Now, to get a bit more in line with the topic:
Monogamy is commitment to one partner (thus the "mon" bit, it's of Latin or Greek origin). The idea Chelsea and Wayne endorse may not work for me, and it may not work for the fair majority of folks here, but that doesn't make it invalid. Based on a lot of personal experience, it's what I'd call a true ideal. It frees one from a lot of hang-ups that frankly don't need to exist, and if it works well (which it sadly doesn't most of the time), then I imagine it can be very invigorating and fulfilling. The problem, though, is people. We've been conditioning ourselves for so long, for whatever reason (we could argue about said reasons all day and night if we wanted), and have thus come up with all kinds of ideas about what is and is not normal and right. It has become so entrenched that I have to shake my head.
Here's the dirty truth of it. Humans, as a race, make things far more complicated than they strictly need to be, in almost every way. I can go on with a ton of examples in almost every walk of life, but here's a salient one. A guy has a girlfriend of two years, and he's got a friend he's known, a female, who's never shown the slightest interest in him, nor he in her. Yet, not only would a little insecurity on the girlfriend's part be expected, but the guy, who has done nothing actually wrong, would be expected to cater to it, and would do so without a backward glance in many cases.
I'm on the fence with a lot of this, I really am. For instance, I do not subscribe to the notion that "just because you feel this way, it's an issue". That makes me sound callous, but I am often rather miffed when someone's erroneous perception of a thing takes precedence over the facts...particularly when the facts have been stated or proven baldly beforehand. Communication is a bloody mess, in my opinion, and often the person who said exactly what they meant gets the shaft because the listener interpreted something that was not there, and then leaves the speaker at a disadvantage dealing with that misperception. This spreads very easily to relationships, monogamous and otherwise, and so I mention it here.
shepherdwolf, if you correctly read my posts, I never slammed Becky's lack of outspokenness. I simply posed a question to her, which she answered, then I said that I know everyone has different approaches, but that I think it's no less important to speak your mind at least sometimes.
I'd also like to comment on your observation that views like mine and Wayne's don't work well. you know why that is? cause, as is clearly demonstrated, here, most people can't handle being in open relationships. so, it isn't that the practice itself doesn't work well, but rather, people's lack of openness to it, is what makes it difficult.
Chelsea, I do see what you're going for. I'm pointing a little at the "what good are your opinions" thing, which appears to be a weighing of opinion validation in the context of willingness to pursue an issue. In short, you're asking her what good her opinions are if she isn't willing to stand and fight; perhaps you amended your stance, but I didn't really see where. That's a stance that's perhaps a bit mismatched to the scenario, and thus why I said what I did in my last post. I read very carefully.
I do generally agree that it's good to air out one's feelings and thoughts...that's wwht the bbards are here for. However, sometimes people know before some of us that either a point won't go anywhere or that there's no sense furthering a discussion about which they do not feel strongly.
Now, to address what you're saying about people, rather than the stance:
Take barefooters, people who don't wear footgear. They have decided to navigate a dirty, harsh world in bare feet. Ninety-eight percent of the time they can do it without hurting themselves, but sometimes they can't. The greater majority of the world is being created with shoe-wearers in mind. Roads are rough and can get terribly hot in summer. Broken glass and simple road litter can cut the soles of one's feet. And here's the thing...there are a lot of good reasons to go barefoot, if you read the science, but the world isn't changing.
Maybe barefooters have the right of it, and it would be better all around to go bbak to basics, but the world isn't set up that way. Similarly, the world, and humans in general, are not set up to embrace a scenario similar to what you and Wayne are suggesting. I would be right in faulting the scenario as much as the people for being incompatible in this instance, though there is the capacity for one or both to change to make a union much more possible. In today's age of property, ownership and sacred sense of entitlement, however, I think we as a society would be ill-prepared for a setup of the sort you're endorsing. If it works for you, and it works for Wayne, and even works for others, that's absolutely all right. I don't think anyone here is really blaming you for "doing it wrong" or any such thing. I just don't think we're set up to handle it well, not right now. It doesn't mean it's impossible or that we shouldn't try, it just means that it would probably take a greater shift in thought than we're capable of in a hurry.
Let us also remember that there are some animals, like lovebirds and certain canines, who mate for life even though it might not be wise to do so. You're suggesting that maybe it should be the norm to conquer that drive. Qucck on about Christian-feminist dogma having created this all you like, but we were monogamous by nature before that...those ideals just enforced it even more strongly, that's all. I strongly suspect that humankind, overall, will remain by and large a monogamous race because that's kind of what it's used to.
I wanted to add to this, and forgot there's no real edit feature here. Also, sorry about typos.
In a nutshell, what I'm saying is this. It doesn't matter if it's the fault of the people or the fault of the stance. The fact is that most people are not compatible with the stance, and thus the stance is not compatible with today's worldview. Kind of a Chinese finger trap, if you will. Since there is no absolutely demonstrable difference as to why one is better than the other, the popular mindset will probably carry the day until such time that it is very very gradually replaced. That's probably the best you can hope for.
I've got some on-topic and off-topic thoughts here.
So, starting with the on-topic stuff. I think getting on somebody's case or even ending the relationship because a person is looking at pictures of people other than their partner seems a bit extreme and mightily insecure to me. I'm assuming the expectation is if you're in a committed relationship that you are required to even privately fantasize only about your partner and any deviation from that is a dealbreaker? I mean, in your own private thoughts? Yes, I'd say if somebody is doing something realtime with other live people like chats or cybering or whatever, that means trouble, but just looking at still pictures or movies, maybe I'm missing something there.
Now, off-topic. This talk of opinions and the willingness of people to express them or not based on their popularity reminds me of when I was on some e-mail lists and I'd be talking about some subject, I'm not sure what, and the people I was talking to would say they were afraid to express their point of view on list because they knew it wasn't that of the majority so it's better they just stayed shut up. Um, what? I would hate to be in any environment where, be it intentional or not, the only opinion that's allowed to be heard is the majority one. Some people must have been beaten down pretty hard to be so afraid to express themselves. This is why I'm a firm believer in the idea that the majority is never to be assumed to be right just for existing. Most people are very easily lead and convinced, and one of the easiest ways to lead people is to tell them everyone else is doing something or believes something or whatever. This apparently makes people want to do and believe things because it saves them from doing upsetting and highly subversive things like thinking and making decisions for oneself, which as you know will surely topple empires and take all the privilege away from the priveleged, which I'm to understand means bad times. The call of the herd is very strong because there's just so many of them and it's easier to just be swept along instead of resisting them.
I see your point SF to why my and Chelsea's view doesn't work well, and you are correct.
There are societies that practice it in a form, and even I have a few other people I know and have dated that see it my way.
Swingers, are one of these societies, groups, that take it further than online, they actually swap partners and enjoy the experiences.
I met a couple that thought it made their relationship stronger actually, so go figure.
There is no less love, or caring in it, but as you point out, until more ground is made so that we can walk barefooted, this world, have been conditioned or built for shoes.
In my own experience with it, the trouble I have is people not believeing me. Smile. I always lay it out, before we get in to a dating, or physical relationship, but for some reason, people want what they want, so this causes friction from time to time.
When it works, it is really an easy way to live. I don't jump on the computer with the motive, well I can flirt, so let me see how many girls I can find. It doesn't generate that reaction.
I think what people are afraid of are those people who, while holding the majority view, say to a person holding the opposite view: "Sure, go ahead, post your opinion. And now watch us all dog pile on you and tear you to pieces. Now, back yourself up, go on." (by the way, I'm not saying anyone on this board does this, I'm speaking in a much more general sense here). The sad fact is that freedom of speech--if such a thing really does exist--"allows" all opinions to be expressed, but favours certain ones. The strong, loud, confident people have a much more powerful say than those who are quietly and uncertainly voicing the opinions that may go against what the louder people are saying. So, yes, it's sometimes easier to shut up. doesn't mean you have to follow the herd, just means you have better things to do with your time than to try and convince people who won't be swayed.
I'm happy to say that, on this thread at least, the debate seems healthy enough. :)
Shepherdwolf, I certainly agree that peoples' feelings are catered to, despite what facts exist. While there is something to be said for being sensitive to a person's insecurities, it's not something you should have to deal with or be expected to cater to unless you choose to. I, myself, am intimately acquainted with exactly this type of insecurity, as you know firsthand. But I never expected you to actually do anything about it or change your behaviour, and I won't.
I firmly believe that you should give your partner the benefit of the doubt; pointless, unfounded insecurities will not only harm the relationship, but will also leave your partner in a painful position in which he is forced to choose between catering to you, and living his freakin' life.
Greg, I am saying that opinions are no good when a person keeps them to themselves, so you're right about that.
also, I never said that I wasn't comfortable with the fact that my stance isn't shared by the majority. in fact, I've said that I realize it isn't, and that I'm proud to have it.
I don't expect the world to embrace it, in my lifetime, either. still, I think it needs to be spoken about, nonetheless.
In a dating situation, when I know someone doesn't like my way of seeing, I don't like to hurt them.
If we don't agree, I always tell them not to even get involved.
If they decide to try it, and for any reason, decide they don't like it, even if we've not had an incident, that is best.
This is why I say I'm on the fence, Meglet. While insecurity and the like can upset me, I'll still roll with it. I don't believe myself intolerant. You're absolutely right when you say that sensitivity goes a long way.
Chelsea, I'm not challenging your right to speak up about how you live your life. Far from it. I will never be the sort of person to suggest the "everyone else does it this way, so shut up and be the minority". Way I see it, I do what works for me and my partner does the same. You do what works for you, and what will ultimately work for whatever partner you have or will have. Neither is wrong, although my stance wouldn't suit you nor would yours suit me. In a world where insecurity was minimized and humans weren't nearly so possessive about things, I'd say that your outlook would be quite a nice norm, but we're sadly a long way from that and showing no serious signs of heading that direction.
To me, freedom of speech is more a political thing than a social one. It means that, for example, you can criticize or speak out against your leaders without being hunted down by a band of thugs working in the government's name and either be imprisoned or killed. In a merely social sense though, freedom of speech does not mean you can express any opinion you wish and it'll just kind of be there and everybody else will nod, accept it as yours and move on. Any opinion is up to questioning, criticism, examination, being laughed at, and being torn to shreds by those who have time and interest in such sports, even majority ones. Be that as it may, I think even the quiet folks should at least try to get in there and at least express their point of view even if they end up being told they're half-baked. Maybe I'm a little louder on-line than I am off because in real life I'm this laid-back introverted kind of guy, but being a thinker and a questioner of the herd, I feel that even if I don't play debate sports, if I'm compelled to say something and have worked out the best way to put it that'll be clear and also entertaining I've done my bit.
Shut up Chelsea! Your wrong!
There you go FS. JK.
speaking up points society in a good direction, though. starting a dialogue is what it's all about.
Greg, when you say you know neither of our stances would suit the other, are you under the impression that I couldn't be monogamous, or are you referring to the open relationship part?
like Wayne, I tell people from the start that it's best not to get involved with me, if they can't handle my views. I even take it a step further, by telling them that if they think they'll be unsure, I'm not gonna get involved.
all parties need to be 100% sure about this sort of thing, and I'd rather someone tell me they aren't, than act like they are, only to discover it was a lie, down the road.
Oh, and one more thing on opinions. My main goal in speaking out is just to express what's on my mind. It may not make sense to people, but I don't go into a discussion thinking I have to convince people I'm right or change their minds. People can think what they want, that's OK, so can I, but I'm not going to sit there and repeat myself two dozen ways in order to push my ideas. I just feel I need to express myself, that's all. You can think I'm a total crazy person or follow me like the next self-help guru, I really don't give a damn either way, although everyone likes a compliment and everyone likes to hear that what they say makes sense to others but that's the icing on the cake, not the whole cake.
Chelsea, this is what I'm saying.
If for some odd reason down the road, the idea of you and I being in a relationship came up, it wouldn't work for two reasons. I am one of those who wants monogamy in the traditional sense. I want someone committed to me, who won't go and get their needs met elsewhere. In short, I want something you profess to being uncomfortable with giving. I know you're capable, but capable and willing are two very different things. You, in turn, want something I am unwilling to give you...and that is the potential for more freedom. I don't need to know your every move, but in a relationship I don't wish to be cheated upon and I'm not at this point willing to entertain becoming more open as you and Wayne are. Thus, we both hold stances that don't work for one another. If you actually decided to settle down with someone and commit to them, agreed upon it first, I have no doubt you could do it, but your unwillingness to do it in the first place, coupled with the traditional monogamist's requirement to such terms from the start, makes the two stances essentially incompatible.
Also, let me clarify the cheating thing. I have no doubt that if you agreed to a monogamous relationship, you wouldn't cheat, and thus I'm also aware that being in a relationship with you may run the risk of you having your needs met elsewhere, and for you that wouldn't constitute cheating since the agreement was made first. What I more meant to say is that I don't want my partner messing around with anyone else sexually, cheating or not. I don't see myself agreeing to terms where it's okay for either of us to be fine with that.
I was never trying to suggest that people should be able to say whatever they want and have everybody go "Oh yes, very nice" and move along. Why would we bother having discussions (or opinions) at all? All I'm saying is that some people fear being torn to pieces before they've really had a chance to defend themselves. It' snot even how I feel (I have no problem at all speaking out against the majority if I feel strongly enough) I was just sort of adding to God Zilla's post about people on mailing lists who are afraid or averse to speaking up.
Greg, on one hand, you get what I'm saying. you clearly misunderstand me, though, on a point.
I've never said that I'm unwilling to be faithful to one person. in fact, although I advocate strongly that I'm for being in an open relationship, it's strictly on the basis that I want my partner and I not to feel pressured, combined with the fact that I know situations will arise where I couldn't perform, at times.
so, contrary to the perception that I'm unwilling to be monogamous, it is totally in my nature to only be with one person at a time.
I would like to speak on the issue of open relationships for a second. I never saw the point. I mean, why enter into something with someone only to go and do something with someone else?
SF, I am interested how you think a relationship we are describing would go?
Next, on this topic, you understand these couples are agreeing to this right, not being unfaithful at all in the terditional sense, only chatting online?
I have, anc can be monogamous . I have also dated more than one person at the same time.
I've even been monogamous married for a long time.
I am currently single, so have, and do date more than one person at a time. It usually is no more than 2.
If I were seeking a long term relationship, I'd only date one person so we could work on that.
But right now, Chelsea and I are talking about a long term or monogamous type relationship.
If you would describe how you see the relationships we are talking about if we were looking to be married or in a long term relationship, I could understand more how you see them. Would you do that for me?
I am interested how we are viewed.
margorp, if you read my posts, I've described how, and why, open relationships are doable, and specifically, why they would work for me in particular. so, I won't repeat myself.
Well, Chelsea, I've read your posts in this topic and in many others, so I don't think I'm out in left field here. You have said in other topics particularly that, for instance, if your partner was sick or unable to perform in some fashion, you'd probably want to get your needs met elsewhere. You have also put forward the notion that you would not want to enter into a relationship where you felt limited in this way. You'd want to get everything right up front, and not tie either yourself or your partner down. You've even gone so far as to say that you wouldn't date someone who was unsure. For me, these things constitute at least a fair unwillingness to enter into a traditional monogamous relationship. It does not mean that you are unable, but it does mean that you aren't exactly seeking it. If you have misspoken, or if somehow I have misunderstood the exact words you have said, now might be a good time to set things straight; else, I've got a pretty strongly-based conclusion there.
And, now I'll address the question put to me by both Wayne and Chelsea, even though I'm not sure what good it will do.
A relationship of the type you two seem to advocate would be one where, by and large, monogamy still ruled the day. I have no doubt that neither of you would be running around with people left and right, and I have no doubt that you would be loving and attentive partners. I have never questioned this. I suspect that if you found the right person, your relationship would be mutually free of a lot of the hangups of modern-day interactions, and that would be lovely. HOWEVER:
1. People like that are few and far between, and even when you find them, they may fall prey to the thing most humans fall prey to and thus ruin the peace (that thing being possessiveness).
2. All the logic, open communication and kindness in the world cannot single-handedly banish insecurity. Believe me, I have been on both ends of this. Humans have sort of trained themselves to be insecure creatures.
3. Last but not least, it bears mentioning that everyone's idea of patience and tolerance is different. What your partner may tough out, you may not wish to, and vice versa. This comes up in regular relationships too, but in your situation it can be more pronounced and can foster the aforementioned insecurity if badly played.
In reality, then, I believe that you might get really lucky and have a lot of happy years, free of a lot of the silly drawbacks we impose upon ourselves, but I also believe that you may spend a lot of time looking for people who will suit your ideal and not finding them and, even once found, I feel as if you may essentially just be trading one minefield for another one.
I know why your outlook wouldn't work for me. Call me stuffy, but I wouldn't want a woman who got her physical needs met elsewhere, even if I could do the same. Part of my committing to this woman to begin with is an automatic agreement on my part that I do not wish my physical needs to be tended to by anyone else, and expect the same of her. I have absolutely zero problem with things like porn or masturbation so long as they haven't come to replace what ought to exist between two consenting adults, but if it involves another person, I'm against it for myself. In a way, that makes me a limiting factor. I'm guilty of high standards. I know this, but am not prepared to change.
yes, Greg, you continue to misunderstand me, and although I doubt I'll ever accurately help you see my point, I'll try again.
in various posts I've made, I've stated that I have bad legs, which, at varrying, unexpected times throughout my life, give me immense trouble.
as I've said, this is the main reason why I feel an open relationship is so workable. cause, there will be occasions throughout my life where I'm unable to perform sexually. therefore, I wouldn't want my partner to feel trapped. they need to feel, and know, that in situations like those, it's their right to get their needs met elsewhere, since I cannot provide them.
what people seem to be missing, regarding Wayne's and my outlook, though, is this. having this particular view doesn't mean we'd sleep with several people per week, month, ETC. it's all about freedom. how is that so difficult a concept to grasp?
whether you care to know, or not, all of my relationships thus far in my life, have been monogamous. however, given the cards I've been dealt, especially recently, I feel it'd be beyond selfish to say to the one I was with that, no matter the circumstances, they could never sleep with others.
I mean, are you guys seriously saying that, knowing some of my situation as you hopefully do, now, that a person should stand by me in such times, and forego their needs, simply cause I have to forgo mine, for a time?
Margorp, check out the Sexual Futurist channel on Youtube as intro resource for poly relationships and open relationships. This is all new to me also in the constext of Western capitalist society.
Shepherdwolf, I think if you do a bit of anthropological research, especially in the paleolithic era from what they have thus far found, you'll find that strict nuclear monogamy has not been the way it's been forever: from what has been gathered, we've got a system where the more you have property rights, ownership, control, top-down economics and industrialization, we have monogamy. There are some real capital and resource benefits to monogamy, especially state-sanctioned monogamy (marriage). If you want to know what those benefits are, find a pair of gays in a relationship who have no access to the benefits and privileges other serial monogamists like myself and others on here enjoy.
Also, with everyone neat and tidy in these little units you have a great way to determine how many people the state owns, how many can be sent to war, what demographics exist for marketing. It's dressed up in cutie-pie values by institutional religions like Christianity / Femitheism but it's all about keeping track of resources, in the end.
My reasoning for why I think Chelsea's and Wayne's views are starting to become practiced again is the reality that humans are now returning to a more mobile existence. Monogamy is based on property rights and capital ownership, whether that capital is monetary, land-based, emotional, familial or otherwise. Go to a divorce court and watch the show, and tell me it's not all about the capital recources.
Traditional relationshps, I mean paleo-traditional like Wayne's and Chelsea's, are what kept the human gene pool diverse enough during early stages to make for a genetically healthy human population. It is also postulated to be the reason for the spread of tool developments and even farming, ironic as that is since farming and settlement started the march towards the strict neat nuclear monogamy.
Shepherdwolf is right about barefooted running or just going barefoot. Even though I like to work out barefoot, love to just be barefoot, I can't expect to be allowed in businesses where barefoot is not allowed, unless I put some shoes on. And now they have barefoot shoes which simulate what it is to be barefoot with your feet covered so you can function in the society we now have.
As to the situation with Becky, my only addition to that is, while you may hold a popular view, you also happen to express it in a way that is not popular: you presented some very rational and coherent points, all of which greatly contribute to understanding of things.
Will Chelsea's and Wayne's way become more popular? I posit that it might well do so, yes, once we are no longer a society based on scarcity. Remember everything capital-based is based on the economics of scarcity: the idea that there is not enough to go around, or barely enough to go around. This scarcity is what provides that two-edged sword of ambition, drive and innovation but countered by feuds, wars and resource control.
It's part of the lone ranger delusion, or the "I-can-make-myself" delusion.
People misunderstand evolutionary theory thinking that all members of species only fight for their individual survival. But now we know in most cases most systems in place in the natural world have everything to do with species survival. Chelsea's and Wayne's way of doing things actually have serious biological benefits in a pre-industrialized world of roaming bands. Actually could have helped better the genetic health after agriculture, where you had strictly confined settlements of serfs whose gene pool got seriously compromised.
Obviously most of us aren't anymore concerned with human fertility, but just like interracial dating has changed modern society, so also might relationships like Chelsea, Wayne, and others online have recently been presenting.
I think it's a lot like green technology, though. We were hearing about this stuff in the 70s. But you had preexisting oil infrastructure that was necessary, but also self-preserving and so refused to participate and even fought against any major changes in development. There's another thread on here about a company in decline one could say an entire industry in decline, who is in the same boat. Monogamy in the relationship equivalent of the oil industry or the industry in that other thread.
The "it's always been this way," argument is more of a religious fallacy than anything based in historical and prehistorical fact.
What's interesting is the anthropological studies done on newly-discovered tribes who still live a hunter-gatherer existence, and how their relationships work. Typically, the more resource-restricted, the more monogamous and the more sexual controls.
This is also true between bonobos and chimpanzees. Bonobos live where food is plentiful enough they rarely if ever need fight over it. Chimpanzees live in a less friendly environment where resources have to be defended and so you have the path towards monogamy: an alpha male and a harem.
Go even further to baboons, who live virtually in the open, they have to be very organized in raiding parties almost under military rule in order to survive.
Presumably bonobos with enough time could become more monogamous and warlike, and vice vers for chimpanzees or baboons. But you consider the gross capital we have invested in our current system, and the remarkable survival instinct of fooling ourselves into believing we want things this way, and you have not a conspiracy, just a very slow path to change if ever. We have the mental capacity but it takes time.
Ultimately what will happen, I think, is that there will be ways to define these new relationships, so that advertising firms and governments can still track demographic data, still find user bases to sell things to, still enlist people and maintain divisions and fight over resources. I think we're smart enough to do this. And Christianity / Femitheism will come out with a new alpha version, then a new beta, and ultimately a new release, accepting these new relationships, and probably tell everybody they really meant to all along.
Then people who say they are tied to the scarcity-based ideology will convince themselves their emotions which formerly could not handle open situations now are able to do so.
We've done this before with interracial dating, even people marrying from the next town, and other things people had assumed humans did from time immemorial.
I used to believe the classic dogma argument about monogamy: If she doesn't control the male resource, how will she ensure she has care for herself and her offspring during the vulnerable time of parenthood? Except, again, really take a look at paleolithic life and modern hunter gatherers, and it doesn't add up. Accident rates were way too high, and it was in the band's best interests for care of all future investments, (the children), to be the whole band's responsibility.
This is not a fluffy bunny belief, as Rush Limbaugh and others would have you believe: it was rooted in pragmatism. It probably had its shamanistic supporters who made a religion out of reason for it but no less practical.
One point on Chelse's argument, she said it was one about freedom. This further proves my point about it being a resource control issue. One of the biggest cultural differences between many Native American tribes and the European immigrants was their view of ownership. They weren't all nature lovers as some would have you believe, but it was simply more practical to treat the land as a communal resource.
So this is a basic cultural misunderstanding.
Look at modern education arguments. The strict monogamist would say: "Why should I be paying for someone else's kids?" After all, remember in a traditional nuclear situation, the kids are supposed to care for the elder parents, so it was in the best interest of the parents to invest all their resources only in their own kids. Kids are eldercare resources to a traditional monogamist - one from which all these values comes.
A true monogamist would not want to invest in the education of others' kids, because that is resource denial.
Now in modern society, parents may move from one sstate to another, their kids long gone, and get care from someone they don't even know. So it makes practical sense to have the band as a whole invest in the education and betterment of the band as a whole's kids.
In a truly monogamous society, kids starve and suffer neglect when the pair who happens to be in charge of them is not competent or dies or in some other way cannot / will not do their job.
Also, in a truly monogamous society, men are a human appliance whose job it is to provide capital resources as well as now any number of domestic resources. Take a look at some statistics on alimony - not even child support - among couples where she earns a decent living. Because we still, as postmodern as we think we are, perceive his income as the primary capital resource. This is monogamy.
We have shed her side of monogamy for the most part: except in some backwater in the south, people don't really expect a woman's 'place' to be producing the next generation of human capital. We have so much human capital, in fact, that we can afford to treat it like dirt for the most part.
I imagine one reason Chelsea takes more guff on here than Wayne does, is men don't really see Wayne as threatening any kind of social privilege. Fifty years ago? Oh hell yes, it'd be as bad on here for Wayne as what Chelsea runs into.
If there ever becomes a real undercurrent of women like Chelsea, can you imagine the fallout? Where are you going to extract alimony and other resources and even blame? This is all now the exclusive property of women in the western world. Nobody wants to give up their property. Men probably fought it fifty to a hundred years ago, and I know moderate guys like me who were active dads but back before I was even born, and they suffered the types of ridicule that Chelsea and her type face now. It has everything to do with privilege and the disruption of existing power structures. It's especially bad when one from the group who is supposed to benefit from these things turns around and does something entirely different.
You've seen reports of the KKK beating black people, killing Mexicans, etc. What the media never portrays is what the KKK does to whites who are n*** lovers, as it were. I was in a backwater part of the country and for the first time in my life I saw a black man being ordered around like a slave. It was positively hideous. I hired him as my driver, and people made rude comments at how I treated him: your normal please and thank you that you say umpteen times per day, nothing at all extraordinary.
So I asked about his sutation, if this is how things are all the time, you know, probably looking back I was asking annoying northern city questions. He finally interrupted by saying, "Guys like you are in a lot more danger here than someone like me." He then explained the phenomenon, the locals really wouldn't be too happy with someone who happens to be white not drinking the privilege Kool Aid.
This is what Chelsea makes me think of sometimes. And I'm not at all surprised at some responses she's gotten in some places. It's called what happens when you upset the applecart.
Chelsea, I did understand that, and do understand it, but in order to bring this to a head, I'll ask you one question.
Let's say you're in a relationship and it turns out that you, and not the other person, have needs not being met. They're more physically unable to perform than you are. What do you do?
I have never once stated that your not wanting to tie someone down is wrong, but I have been operating under the assumption that if you don't want to tie someone down, you probably don't want to have similar restrictions on yourself. Set me straight if you are instead adopting a double standard on this. If you are, there's nothing really wrong with that; double standards abound in human relationships.
leo, thanks for your posts. it's nice to see that someone just gets where I'm coming from, and tries to help relate it to those who don't, in other, more understandable ways.
I think you're right on, regarding people giving me so much flak cause I'm a woman who not only holds different views from society, but also cause I speak my mind freely about what I'm passionate about, and will willingly keep trying to drive the point I'm trying to make so that it can be heard, and maybe encourage someone, somewhere, to perhaps think a little differently than they currently do.
Greg, of course I don't/wouldn't wanna have similar restrictions placed on myself. I would've thought that would go without saying, but I was clearly mistaken.
this is why, if I were with someone who, for a time, couldn't perform, I'd discuss ahead of time that the same freedom should be provided for me, as I'd provide for my partner.
so, in case you were thinking otherwise, this definitely wouldn't be something that's sprung on whoever I'm with.
hope that answers your question.
Yes, it answers my question. It confirms what I thought all along. I know you wouldn't just spring it on someone out of nowhere, that you'd bring it all to the table before anything was embarked upon in the first place. But if you'd want to have the freedom to get your needs met elsewhere, and would be equally willing to grant that freedom to others...and indeed, if you practically insist on that potential freedom being granted even if it's never used on either side, that's not monogamy in the sense we're talking about. It doesn't mean I believe you're wrong, or that I think you'd sleep with whoever just for the pure hell of it. I'm not failing to understand you here; in fact, the only reason I've been asking questions you might find obvious and self-evident is because you're now making claims that suggest that either I have misread you orrthat you've misspoken somewhere. Neither appears to be the case.
The simple fact remains. I don't want to give or take that freedom you seem to prize. I hold absolutely no moral high ground with my stance, it's preference only. I can meet my physical needs on my own if need be, and so should my partner. If she isn't okay with that, she doesn't have to date me.
Let's also be clear on the fact that I've agreed that a slightly more open view is probably good in a lot of ways. At worst, I'm saying that people at large probably aren't ready for it. I'm not saying it's morally dubious or despicable, and I'm not saying it is in any way less or wrong or anything. I feel as if you, in particular, are a touch more defensive and protective than my statements warrant; I'm not meaning to attack you or confront you on this. You asked questions and I answered them. I can see what Leo's saying about you catching a lot of flak though; just be assured that I'm not one of the people from whom you're getting hell. I don't see you as morally loose because you might want to have your needs met elsewhere in extenuating circumstance and, believe it or not, I can see the selfless side of the coin when you say you'd want your potential partner to get his itch scratched elsewhere if you weren't in any suitable shape to do it for him. All I ever said is that it's not for me, and that it's not really monogamy if other people are involved.
Okay Shep, thank you for expressing more as to what you felt a relationship like Chelsea and I are talking about.
I’d like to try to address some of your points, not because I’m trying to change your mind, but explain the relationship.
Leo pointed out many social and economic reasons for monogamy, but I’m going to stick with the emotional, which is what I believe drives people to want it solely.
Emotional even hear, seems to be the corner stone of the traditional monogamy argument.
1. People like that are few and far between, and even when you find them, they may fall prey to the thing most humans fall prey to and thus ruin the peace (that thing being possessiveness). On that point you are correct. It is not easy finding people that are comfortable with my views, and many times they go along to get along, but find they just can’t do it anymore. For this reason it must be talked about at the start, so they can’t say they didn’t know, or that you changed on them. Honesty must be the key, or people like myself can cause lots of heartache
2. All the logic, open communication and kindness in the world cannot single-handedly banish insecurity. No, it doesn’t, but here is the thing, people do it anyway, and this is what causes that problem of cheating. In my view, I see the less harm in honesty than the traditional view of lying.
3. Last but not least, it bears mentioning that everyone's idea of patience and tolerance is different. What your partner may tough out, you may not wish to, and vice versa. This comes up in regular relationships too, but in your situation it can be more pronounced and can foster the aforementioned insecurity if badly played.
And here again, I lean on honesty. How can it be more pronounced when you have laid out the things you believe? It is like religion, if one believes in religion and one doesn’t, it is not the one that doesn’t fault when the one that does gets hurt, because one day it comes up and they hear the same thing they heard before, now is it?
This happens because people what to own, change, and make a person in to what they want them to be. This is often times done with social standing, financial status, or just flat out guilt and threats. I want my lover with me, because she wants to be there, not because she might lose her membership at the club, look bad in the church, lose the comforts she has become use to having, or because I might hurt her or do something to make her look bad.
Hurt, is hurt, and how hurt a person is depends on the persons desire or decision on how hurt they are. The level or hurt is controlled by the person that is hurt, not the person that hurts them.
I am going to move on to a second post and now explain reasons why I feel as I do, and what a relationship like Chelsea and I might be like to live in.
Greg, although I appear deffensive to you, and probably others as well, I'm simply stating where I stand (albeit quite strongly). this is a reflection of my entire personality, rather than me "being touchy" about this issue, as you perceive.
also, I never said that the kinda relationship I'm talking about was considered monogamy. rather, I said that, contrary to what some people seem to think, I can be monogamous, have been monogamous, and might be monogamous, at some point in the future.
What I’m going to say is not the case for everyone, but are my reasons why I believe as I do.
People change over the course of a life time. They learn they have different needs, wants. Taste change and opinions because of things that happen to them or around them.
If a person is not strong willed, they can be made upset a whole life.
People get sick, no matter how healthy they are, and many things are not in our control.
No, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but you never know.
An example of this is a woman was married to a man for 10 years. She decided to start going back to church, because she felt she wanted to pick up her religious beliefs. The priest told her she was living in sin, and that her children were born in sin, because her husband was not that religion, so her mirage was not valid in the eyes of God.
The man loved his wife, but she would not give him herself anymore, because it would be sinning, because she was no longer married but legally she was. She can’t divorce him, because the church won’t divorce her, and she can’t remarry, because the law says she’s already married. The man’s 35. What would you have him do?
If he doesn’t divorce should he give up his sex life for the next 40 or so years for monogamy sake?
He is seeking ways to help her, but if he fails?
Chelsea and I understand people change. We understand things can happen over a life time no one can predict, and when these things happen we feel it is unfair to hold a person to you for monogamy sake.
Loving a person means loving them totally, and that means letting them live, not holding them because of guilt, or a promise they made they have to struggle to keep.
I personally don’t want a person to have to be with me out of guilt, because it hurt the quality of love and life they are giving me. They have settled, and when a person settles you don’t get all of them.
If a flirtation turns in to more than entertainment, I want them to have what they think they need. This doesn’t mean I’ll be waiting until they get back, but I might. That is the chance they take, not me, and vice versa.
If I am no longer able, physically, mentally, or for whatever reason, providing what they need, I don’t want them suffering or doing without. I love them, and that means wanting them to have the best life they can have.
We are monogamous until we are not. Maybe it is for life, maybe it is for a few years, but I have had all of them, not some of them during the time we loved.
It is not their fault I am sick, or not providing, they did nothing to cause it, so I don’t want them suffering or masturbating, having less when what they really want is a soft, warm body to love or talk to.
If self-masturbation was good enough, why do you marry or want a full time lover Shep?
Sex is not the complete picture here
Last let me talk about the sick bed thing. You spend time in the hospital with your lover, than you know what? You go home, watch television, eat a meal you like, visit with friends on the phone or in person, breath the fresh air outside and many other things they can no longer do. Aren’t you cheating on them having something they can’t anymore?
You talk about masturbation, but they can’t even have that.
If you want true monogamy, you need to ask the hospital to give you a bed to and stick a tube down your throat, and hook you up to an IV so you don’t get anything or any pleasures they can’t.
I personally wouldn’t want my lover to be in that condition.
I believe in freedom to live, not caging a person.
to add to Wayne's last post, I forgot to touch on a comment that Greg made earlier, which I'd like to challenge.
Greg, and anyone else who feels that people with mine and Wayne's views will either have a harder time being monogamous than you do, or have a harder time finding people to accept and embrace our views, why do you feel this way?
is it cause you know mmost of society wouldn't accept them, therefore, you assume that that means we'll be worse off than the majority?
and, speaking only for myself, here, how can you be so certain that I'd even want a longterm relationship in my lifetime, just cause the majority of humanity does?
True. Smile. I know that, but didn't think to state it.
Lol to Wayne's example about the wife and church. Churches are mainly populated by chicks, and if you get the guys alone away from alpha male / priest / pastor, he's there because she believes it's best for the kids or in order to please or satisfy her in some fashion.
In western society, for most relationships, she is the driver, or as Doctor Laura puts it, she is the traffic cop of the relationship. Some of you all would make Doctor Laura very proud, which is kind of an amusing thought. And no, Chelsea, in this case the shoe doesn't fit. lol
I actually meant that you may have more trouble finding a partner who is okay with your more open stance. As I've stated at least once now in this topic alone, I don't doubt that you can be monogamous if you wish to. Remember, this implies that you're looking, but does not imply that you care. Being technical, even if you don't care, you will literally still have more trouble than the average person finding an ideal relationship, not least because you actively aren't looking. Heh. But at that point we start devolving into spurious argument, so I'll leave it there. Point is, I don't think you're incapable of being monogamous and I don't think you'd labour mightily if you chose to do it; I'm only saying you might find it a bit hard to see others of your own persuasion in today's day and age. If you aren't looking, don't care or already have your eye on someone, then power to you; I'm not citing difficulty as a reason not to try.
Wayne, I see what you're getting at, and I commend you as much as Chelsea for feeling the way you do. However, I'm going to point out a couple of things I'm in disagreement with.
First, you're demonizing monogamy with your examples concerning hospital care and the like. Monogamy does not necessarily entail that you must experience and suffer through exactly what the other person experiences in all facets of life. This is simply not feasible. It is by definition a commitment to one partner, and beyond that its scope is actually pretty broad.
Next, and probably most important, I feel as if you're neglecting a rather large part of monogamous relationships. That is, it's still a two-way agreement. She does not have to say yes. She does not have to agree. If two people do agree, however, they are both essentially telling each other that they will live by the agreed-upon standards. If both of those people (not one, but both, and that's important) are willing to go without in some ways so that their partner will feel more secure, or because they feel it's the right thing to do, or because they've been sort of raised to be that way, or because they honestly can't bear to be unfaithful as they see it...well, if both of those people are going to abide by those terms, it's a little hard for you to make it look unjust. It's not as if the grand majority of people are stumbling about in a haze of ignorance and ultimately unable to decide what is best for themselves, after all. Monogamists everywhere enjoy the benefits and don't want to risk what they see as drawbacks. When they find a partner who is in the same position, they both prosper. Your way of explaining things, Wayne, makes things look rather one-sided and selfish, but if both people are doing it (at least in a case like this), then that stance can't be easily maintained.
Remember me saying I was on the fence on a lot of this? I wasn't kidding. I am monogamous by nature at this point, but that doesn't mean I can't see a lot of potential benefits for the way you and Chelsea might be willing to do things. There's lots of openness and goodness there. I know myself well enough, however, to know that I'm probably too possessive to pull it off. If I was in the minority, or if my standards were mercilessly high, I might think about trying to squish that particular vice...but since my partner has the exact same trait, since all of my partners, bar none, have had that same trait, and since its absence would have rendered a relationship with any one or all of them impossible, I feel no real shame in it. If I am too selfish to want my partner to get her needs met elsewhere if I'm incapable, then I'm also selfless enough to give her the same courtesy if she should one day be lacking. As you said, sex isn't everything, so even if one day one or the other of us has to go without the real thing for some reason, I have the benefit of a very strong relationship outside of just the sexual aspects which I could not have had with that person if I wanted to maintain your open stance. As a sort of final note, by the way, I'm not saying masturbation or whatnot is totally okay and all anyone should ever want. I'm saying that, for most at least, it can probably suffice. Sex is not a need, not in the true hierarchical sense, except where procreation is concerned. Sexual pleasure is a desire, sometimes a very strong one, but as you said yourself, it's not everything; anyone who says they cannot live without it is full of it.
just to clarify, the term that I saw in the article was actually "monogomit" because it was saying that online is different than offline. So I know the difference between that and monogomy, but wanted to clarify that that's the term proposed to be used for this sort of thing.
I deliberately posted as I did to make my point.
Where I lost you was when I said sex wasn't the whole thing.
I didn't mean sex, like you must have it. I meant sex is not all that makes up a relationship.
You need to talk, you need someone to hold hand s with, you need someone to go places with. You need someone to just sit next to you, not saying anything on a cold night.
It is good to know someone else is in the house, even if you are not in the same room. Smile.
Do you know how it feels to sleep with another person, and I mean just sleep?? I'm a snubbler, so. Smile.
Shep, it is good to just know you got somebody.
If your lover is llaid up in the hospital, or in the house, but not tied to you, even if you have the physical person there, believe me you won't feel them unless they are with you. It is lonely.
I speak from experience. .
Wayne, I know exactly what most of that is like. I'm a snuggler too.
When I go out, when I come back, when she's off somewhere, I still know she's coming back to me or I to her.
If she was sick in bed and I had to go do something, same deal.
I don't feel I'm sacrificing anything I don't mind sacrificing for this. I get all the benefits except having my physical needs met when she's incapable, and since we established that this is a desire rather than an actual need it's not worth changing my lifestyle for. Since she gets precisely the same benefit and knew that was what she was going to get when she agreed to date me, that's it in a nutshell, right there.
I could have a little more if I wanted it, but I don't. That's the real difference. I have enough to go on, and at least in this instance my partners have (and do) too. They could have more, but given the way many people react when issues of sexual desire being fulfilled elsewhere come up, and given the way insecurity has a nasty way of creeping up on people...well, it's just not worth the risk for me. If it is for other people, that's cool.
I'm not trying to change you, but I must say, you keep hanging on the sexual.
Spend some time in a bed with a woman that won't snubble with you, because she is thinking she'd like to be someplace else and let me know. Smile.
Spend some time in the house.
What I'm talking about is not only physical needs, but the complete thing.
If you go away and have a conversation with another woman while your girl is not able to talk to you, you are cheating. Smile.
You are talking to that woman, because you need to hear a female voice. You need to talk to a woman, not guys.
Now if you are bisexual, or gay, the same rules apply.
I guess I see sex as a need, and something that should be fulfilled. I don't see why it should be left out of the other nees in life, like eating a good meal, drinking a good beer, or watching a 50 inch TV with your favorite sports team kicking ass.
Holding back sex causes issues.
I just tend to lean on the freedom. We are free to live.
We are free to live. But all freedom holds consequences if you seize it, and if I deem that the consequences are of greater risk than my current circumstances, then I will forego that freedom in exchange for the good things I have.
We must be firing on different cylinders. I am not stuck on sex or anything of the sort. One of the biggest things about a long-term relationship for me is the ability to be with and live with one another. I can get that from a monogamous partner who shares my views, so why do I need more freedom than I currently possess?
sex is not everything, but it sure makes an already solid relationship, even more solid than it would otherwise be.
we can survive without sex, sure, but why the hell should we?
it's a need that's just as important as honesty is. and, as Wayne so accurately said, if left unfulfilled, it will cause problems down the road. there's no two ways about that.
I wholeheartedly disagree that Wayne's presentation of his views sounds selfish. they're what I'd call selfless, actually.
so, Greg, you never answered my question as to why you feel the way you do regarding open relationships.
just in case anyone is curious, though, and even if not (lol) I'll answer the question I posed to him.
I was not raised to view open relationships as healthy, and I didn't even know they existed, till several years ago, when I first joined the zone, and heard a user talk about being in one.
even then, I didn't examine my actual thoughts on the matter, and it wasn't until I was my grandma's caretaker in 2010, that I did so, seriously, for the first time.
then, with my recent health issues cropping up, in the last couple months, my views that I'll never be able to watch a person I love and am in a relationship with go without sex, if I'm ever unable to provide it, were only reaffirmed.
sure, they could masturbate, but what would they be getting from me physically, in doing so? nothing but a verbal, "oh, I'm sorry I can't help you, but you're stuck with me regardless?"
that's not any way I wanna make a person feel, nor would I wanna be that person, myself.
Chelsea, I've already answered your question I think. I've said that I think you'll have a harder time in an open relationship more because there are few who share those views than anything else.
I'm going to smash one point straight back across the proverbial court though. You absolutely, categorically cannot equate sex and honesty as equally germain in a long-term relationship. Lack of sex is a pain in the neck, can be a terrible thing to be without, but it will not necessarily undermine a relationship. It is the denial of a basic physical craving which, in most cases, can be self-satisfied anyway. Honesty is an entirely different situation, however. If you take all reasonable expectation of honesty out of a relationship, then you basically take away one of humanity's advantages as sentient creatures. Why socialize if you aren't going to be honest? Why have a relationship at all if there's no guarantee of honesty? I know that your more open-relationship stance actually prides honesty very highly so I'm not accusing you of being dishonest in any way, but I'm contending that while you could probably live without sex, you really wouldn't want a relationship without honesty.
There are both selfish and selfless elements to open and monogamous relationships.
Monogamists are selfish because they do not want their partners to stray, but are selfless in that even when denied their own desires, they will (ideally anyway) remain faithful.
Open-relationship types are selfish enough to suggest that they want a relationship where they are free to get their physical cravings met elsewhere, but are equally selfless in the sense that they won't begrudge a partner who needs the same.
It really does depend on what you have, what you think you lack and how you feel about it. By no means am I lauding one above the other except in my very own case.
yes, Greg, I can, and will continue to equate sex as being on the same level as honesty is, in a relationship.
while you, personally, will continue to disagree, I'm confident that I'm not alone in those feelings.
I also stand by people not being able to maintain, or truly have, a healthy relationship without sex.
as humans, we have needs that must be met, and sex is not, nor should it be, excluded from that category, period.
I'm amazed, though, that people can even act like sex is simply a want, when we're made to find it pleasurable, and it really does make one's life more fulfilling all around.
it's something I wasn't raised to be okay/have a good attitude about, but I'm glad I no longer parrot what was told to me all those years, nor do I believe it.
Chelsea, I hope you're not implying that I'm just a parrot. I'd find that a bit offensive, particularly since I've said that I do understand a lot of the merits of an open relationship.
Truth to tell, the only thing I really want to address at this point is the sex and honesty being equal thing. In fact, I'm going to be rather hard on it.
1. A good romantic relationship will not succeed without honesty. Period. No exceptions. If you can't trust your partner, and they can't trust you, then you may as well be dealing with a series of one-night stands for all the emotional good it will do you.
2. That said, sex has a really large role to fill if it's going to equal honesty. It has to be utterly integral to a romantic relationship, to the extent that for everyone, with no exceptions, it constitutes the greater part of the experience, or at the least, a share equal to half (the other half being honesty of course). This means sex has to be, and remain, a huge factor for both parties, from the beginning of the relationship until its end. If honesty is that all-encompassing, and I submit that it is, then so must sex.
3. What can you say about seventy-year-olds who still love each other after forty-odd years of marriage, people who no longer have sex at all but who still genuinely like each other's company? Can you say that, lacking sex (which by your argument is crucial), their relationship has failed? Because I don't know about you, but when I see two people happy, I don't think it's my right to arbitrarily judge that they lack something in their relationship when A) I'm not part of it and B) evidence speaks loudly to the contrary.
4. One day, Chelsea, you are going to be old, and even more unable (and perhaps unwilling) to have sex. I doubt, however, that you are going to stop valuing honesty at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong. When or if you do hit that point and are no longer a viable sex partner, have little to no workable drive of your own, if you're equating sex to honesty, what you're basically saying is that you are no longer relationship material. You are putting yourself in precisely the same boat as liars and swindlers everywhere, people you'd never date because they'd tell you what you wanted to hear and placate you. If you are unable to provide sex, and make the sweeping generalization that sex and honesty are of equal value, then you have no recourse. Are you prepared to accept that in defense of your claim?
Just my two cents' worth, as usual. I'm not saying sex can't be very important. It certainly can be. But from a functional standpoint it simply does not equate to honesty.
Sorry, forgot one thing:
Sex is not. a need. No two ways about it. It is a very strong desire, a craving, sometimes almost a physical compulsion (almost, not quite, unless you're addicted outright and that's a psychological disorder)...but if you won't die without it, if you can have a good life without sex, then it is not a need.
I'm not saying it's not important. It's very important. I'm also not saying that some people value it more than others. But it's not a need. Honesty, by contrast, is; without honesty as a necessity, conversation, interaction at large is meaningless.
It is my honest belief that if you feel you cannot have a relationship without good sex, the truth is actually that you just don't want to. The good news is that you don't have to, so that's all well and good. The bad news is that unless you can prove that sex is a physical necessity for you without which you will die, or unless you can prove with some sort of scientific facts that sex contributes in an essential way to your well-being in a relationship, you're speaking out of ignorance when you say that sex is something you need.
I'm even going to take this a step further. For you open-relationship types, sex isn't even so much about your partner as it is about keeping the tank topped up, so to speak. After all, if it's such a great need, you're still going to want it satisfied when your partner is out of commission, so the link between sex and the person providing it is perhaps a bit tenuous. Might want to watch the thin ice in that direction.
I'm being very literal about wants and needs here for a reason. It is nothing personal. We purported to want rational discourse, and rational discourse is what I believe we're having.
Shep, I don't want my lover to feel trap and afraid of consequences , I want them to be able to come to me and tell me what they feel they need and we work it out so that they can get it.
If that need drives them away from me, it was going to anyway. I don't want someone I love feeling trapped.
Now, I'm a bit lost on honesty and sex. Why do you see allowing your partner to enjoy sex when you can not provide, or they have a different need dishonest?
In these types of relationships, it is exactly that, the honesty that goes with sex and sexual needs.
How are they not honest when they tell you.
We are as relationship worthy as you are, and want strong, healthy, and loving relationships, we just don't believe to have them we must demand it. I don't have a word for it, because it is not monogamy I mean. We don't have to demand that, because we are giving it willingly.
It is not like we expect to be trading partners, or once a month our lover goes off to have sex with someone, it is we don't worry about it, and trust that we'll be told so we can work it out without anger, hurt, you just want somebody else you don't love me anymore, stuff!
If one person decides to sneak around that is totally silly, and would have to be seen as dishonest like anyother act of dishonesty.
Now, remember, some couples actually do trade. They go to a party with other couples and agree on that night to be with someone else, but it is a shared experience, they are not cheating.
I have gone to one such gathering to see what it was like, but have not done this.
I see that you are only concerned about your lovers sex needs, so would not feel cheated as long as they didn't have physical sex with anyone, am I correct?
Even if you can not provide, you don't want them to have it.
In my relationship, it is not only sex, but other things that can change I want my lover to experience, so I put sex in the box with it all, and don't see sex as separate.
To allow your lover to experience requires much trust, because you have to be sure it is an experience, and that they have been honest with you and are not escaping to be with someone else. If they are escaping, you want to be told, so you can get things settled for yourself, you don't want to be in the dark on it.
As you point out, sex is not what makes a relationship, and many couples are together and don't have sex anymore, but have that strong love/friendship for each other.
What you don't know, and many assume, that couples have sex well in to their 80's even 90's Shep. Most people are able to enjoy sex untel death.
Most times the reason you see couples not sharing or needing sex anymore in their lives, is because one person has given it up, or they never saw it as much anyway, so don't care to make it happen. They weren't sexual people.
Also, health plays a large part, so if both persons have health issues, sexis not a problem either.
I am talking when sex is, or one person needs when his or her partner can't provide, that is when the love comes in to play.
If we know we can never have sex, but are healthy in all other respects, we feel we need to find someone like minded that doesn't need sex. We don't want someone to do without.
Last, even when a person is getting their needs met, is it not conceivable they can love and love the other person hard and not want to leave them? They are emotionally attached just as monogamous couples.
I'm not trying to change you remember, just explain the other side.
Right on, Greg! Very well explained. Because, if one is going to be monogamis there'll be no third party. Yes we tend to complicate things, but sometimes, for that same reason, one can make things so easy for themselves and it becomes so comfortable if it's all about us, which fortyately it isn't.
fortunately***
firstly, Greg, no, I wasn't implying that you were/are a parrot. if you'll notice, I said that I used to be. that's exactly what I meant. there's no hidden meanings behind anything I say, ever.
trust me, if I was personally attacking you, or someone else, for that matter, whoever it is would know it.
you seem to be getting quite defensive, though, ever since Wayne and I have started to argue that sex is incredibly crucial in a relationship. why is this?
what I'm about to say shouldn't surprise you all, but since it relates to sex, I'll say it, anyway.
if someone tells me that they're unwilling to provide sex, I won't date them, period. I also wouldn't want an asexual, or someone with even a low sex drive, to waste their time with me, either.
I guess it's not common knowledge that old people still enjoy sex, just like most others. either that, or certain people just don't wanna believe they do, cause of their own hangups and what have you.
old people might have a lower sex drive than some of us, but I guarantee you that they still see sex as a way to express their feelings towards their partner.
Gran and Gramps wanting to get laid? Shocking!
Seriously, this is what has created what is called the MILF, and older woman that is attractive and younger men go after, or the Cougar or Puma, the old woman that has to seek out younger men to get her sexual needs met.
Older men are just called dirty old bastards. Smile.
oh, and one more thing. no, Greg, I don't believe you're answering my questions with what you personally think. you're speaking generally. however, I take the hint. you're one of those who doesn't see any worthwhile reason to do so, cause of how heated this discussion is for you, and many others.
and, people wonder why sex continues to be such a taboo subject.
if people were more open about it, open about why they feel the way they do, society would begin to see the progress that so many of us genuinely wanna see.
Thank you leo. That is how you properly answer a question. Chelsae, I see absolutely no reason for you to be so rude and condiscending.
Chelsea, I believe you ascribe qualities to me or to my answers that don't exist. I'll address them as I may.
First and foremost, I'm not actually defensive. I have nothing to protect or uphold here, and I didn't start out trying to change anyone's mind. What I do works for me, and also happens to work for the fair majority of the human race (though why it works is a topic of hot debate, of course), but even if it wasn't popular, I wouldn't mind.
Sex is not a taboo subject for me. I don't flinch from discussing anything, really...never have and never will. Also, it's good to know that you don't snipe, and that I will see a personal attack coming if at any point you see fit to use one. I extend you the same courtesy.
Wayne, let me clear something up. I'm not saying that what you open-relationship types do is dishonest. In fact, it's very honest because you're getting your terms right up front and are then seeking agreement before you go any further. We are just agreeing to different standards, that's all. You and Chelsea want a partner who will be willing to go elsewhere if they must, and who will be willing to let you do the same. I, and many others like myself, want a partner who will rely on me, or on themselves, for sexual fulfillment and who will hold me to exactly the same standard...a standard I am very willing to uphold.
I'm not at all squeamish about sex, and I'm not a prude. A monogamist doesn't have to be prudish, and many are not...just as the larger portion of people in open relationships are not in any way to be looked down upon for what they do.
Chelsea, do me a favour and ask me point-blank the question you don't feel I'm answering. Humour me, please, because if anything it's possible it's been kind of buried in the maelstrom. I am not the type to shy from something I don't want to answer, I assure you.
margorp, I'm not being rude or condescending. I'm simply having a discussion, as is the object of these boards.
Greg, the question you didn't answer, is this. speaking only for myself, here, how can you be so certain that I'd even want a longterm relationship in my lifetime, just cause the majority of humanity does?
I also asked why you felt that people with mine and Wayne's views would have a harder time finding partners.
that question, you actually answered, by saying the fact that we're in the minority makes it harder. I never denied, or meant to come across like I was denying that finding like minded people is a rarity. I'm just curious if you had other reasons, in addition to that one?
Right. The only bit of that I haven't answered directly, though I did address it, was how I can be so sure you're after a relationship.
Here's the thing. I can't be sure. But you do have standards about what you would do, and wer re discussing those. If you determine, or have already determined, that a relationship is not for you, I strongly suspect your vehemence would be less apparent. Nevertheless, I could be wrong, but for the sake of this discussion it's sort of an academic point.
And no. Aside from you being in the minority and running a little against the grain, there's no huge hurdle I see before you if indeed you do wish to seek an open relationship except for the aforementioned ones. You're going to get a few less tolerant types who despise what they thik you represent, but most will probably be I the camp I'm in: "It's not for me, but have on and good luck to you".
Quite frankly I didn't feel like reading all the posts before I posted here because I haven't been on in a few days, so pardon me if the topic has strayed and we are talking about something else now. Either I am committed to a person 100 percent, orI'd rather just flirt with more than one girl. I can't see myself trying to convince myself that I can commit myself to someone while sleeping with other girls, or even flirting with others on the side. Online or in person doesn't change what it is, flirting is flirting. Sex is sex. If it works for other people, and they are honest with the other person about what they do and how they feel, that is commendable.
you are wrong, SW. I wouldn't be any less outspoken about this stance, if I felt settling down weren't for me, which, truth be told, I do feel that way.
being in a committed relationship certainly isn't something I'm incomplete without. for me, companionship and sex are what's most important, right now.
that isn't to say that I won't change my mind later on and wanna settle down with someone. anything is possible, which is exactly the point Wayne and I have been trying to drive home on this particular topic, and a few other ones that have come to the forefront, recently.
people change, circumstances change, and it's good to be open to those facts, willingly embracing them as they come.
I realize many people aren't prepared to carry that out, but I feel it's a valid point to bring up, nonetheless.
forgive me for straying off topic, a little, but I feel this needs to be said. I don't think some people realize how invaluable having someone there is. just knowing that they'll listen to you, be as good a friend that they possibly can, expect nothing in return, and you both know that things are mutual. there's nothing better than that.
Some say sex is not a need. Twenty years ago women said this, when men masturbated to get that need met when she wouldn't give it. They made all of Shepherdwolf's arguments almost to a word, except substitute masturbation for open relationships and Shepherdwolf's genial attitude towards open relationships for a snide one.
So, sex is not a need, say some now, say those who see porn as an addiction, or masturbation as a sin or an objectification of women, or what have you.
By that logic, neither are most foods. You could survive on very few calories. Forego all these foods for your relationships? So also it goes for when she "needs", if you will, to talk about her hard day. In the spirit of things not being a need, it sure feels like a need when she needs to talk, and any human around with a beating heart seems to understand that she has a need to talk and let it out.
But, if sex is not a need, these aren't needs either. So eat only what you absolutely need, sleep only as much as you need, forego most of your living space since that's not a need either. You might end up with another Taliban type population as a result but this is what hard core extremists like your religious actually want.
I'm not suggesting Shepherdwolf is saying this, but I'm just challenging the nature of how needs are getting measured.
I'll tell you about a couple of mine that I didn't have words for, but actually were as real as a need for food, and yes I would have not died without them:
After my father recovered from his heart attack a couple winters ago, we didn't end up going out there to see him, most the rest of the family did. However, I did have a need, if you will, to see how he actually was. And although when they came to our place I had primarily been thinking about helping them with what they were facing, I got a very real need met. Now there is no religion afoot to tell me that need is wrong, no older men's groups out there to tell me I am objectifying my father's well-being to have wanted to see him restored, so there are no taboos creating an argument that it is not a need simply because I will not die from not having it.
I have a similar need, to see that my daughter is okay, have even when she wasn't in the room opened a cupboard in the kitchen just to see there was plenty of food in there: there I told on myself haha but still. No taboos out there, no religions claiming the need is somehow a sin or wrong, or daughters' groups claiming I'm objectifying my daughter's well-being, and it is ok and accepted that grown children of elderly parents, and parents of college kids, do have these needs to check up on and make sure they're okay, even if we do work at it to not be obtrusive.
But Shepherdwolf, we will not die if these needs are not met. Yet, it could be said that these are actually things that benefit the relationships, not just the well-being of the college kids and the elderly parents.
Just like there are striking comparisons between the anti-gay groups and the anti-interracial dating groups, there are also some striking similarities between some of the arguments made on here and those made by older generations about porn and masturbation.
I know of several relationships where she has the house, the car, the kids and at least half his income plus hers because he whacked it and had a little porn. And they in all cases said that sex was not a need. Never did they say the two-car garage was not a need either. I find that whole stance extremely hypocritical on so many levels it isn't even funny. I am not saying you are hypocritical, you may not have thought this all the way through, and may not have seen the other side of it. I find myself in the odd position my friend was, only in her case she was telling a black anti-gay rhetorist how his quotes were actually the same ones used against people his parents' generation,only then it was blacks and not gays.
Truth is, in the context of a relationships, lots of what we take for granted now are not needs. After all, when marriages were about property and boundaries (as in some part monogamy still is, the property has just changed), there was not necessarily even love between the two. It's been written that the middle ages gave us gunpowder and romance.
Before that time, in monogamous relationships it was all arranged. So apparently romance isn't a need, if you will, either.
And yet how often we see lack of romance as a reason justified for a breakup, but if you say lack of sex, "Oh, no, sex isn't a need! That terrible dirty man beating off and looking at porn, how terrible!" and she gets the store. I would just be careful as a man, walking the sex-isn't-a-need line, just as I would recommend any black or disabled or other minority exercise caution before adopting some other anti-stance like the anti-gays do, because those tactics were used on you or your forebearers a generation ago, and this is only license for it to happen again. Only license by your own hand.
Me personally, the more I learn of this stuff the more I don't know, to be honest. And probably will never really know, unless due to some tragedy the marriage of 20 years I am in ends. I do know, I take absolutely nothing for granted. I've seen some fine people have what they built come tumbling down in a day, and many if not all were holding tightly to the strict monogamist view, and afterwards all they were left doing was dusting it off and saying "But it was supposed to work," and "Where did we go wrong?" I can't at all presume to be somehow better than they are, so again, what I do know is I take nothing at all for granted and that is about it.
I second that. Companionship is huge. I feel it is truly ideal when a lover an also be your best friend. They aren't just there for sleeping with, and they aren't just there for a mutual emotional dump session either.
Looks like we posted at exactly the same time.
I will say that yes, I see sex as a need, I see my wife's need to emotionally let down after work as a need, I see their need to go out and, yes, bond with each other, as a need working in such a high stress social service environment. In fact I probably see those things of hers as more a need than she does. Re-stating my preior expression, anyone standing around who is human and has a beating heart in that situation would see these things as a need, when watching how difficult it is when she must do without that level of emotional support.
Fortunately there is no snake in garden phallic principle or femitheist objectifying dogma to tell us that these are not needs. Because as humans we know this level of emotional support for people in her situation is really very much a need.
If I could not help her, if my own situation were such that I couldn't emotionally handle it for osme reason, I would not be upset if she got that help somewhere else.
Why we do differently with sex, I really don't know.
The problem with sex and the control of it, is there's too little science on the issue and too much half-science that parrots some rather scary dogma, either softcore or hardcore but dogma nonetheless.
The D word always causes trouble. :)
Leo,
If I had at any point said or directly implied that we ought to go without the things we absolutely do nott need, I would see where you're coming from. As it is, I believe I've offered up plenty of statements to the contrary. About the strongest thing I said was that a person who claims not to be able to be in a relationship without good sex is not unable, but unwilling. Call it an academic distinction if you like, but bear in mind that never once did I say that just because we don't need something, we ought to go without solely for that reason.
I sort of resent all the Christian-feminist buzzwords being tossed around when it comes to this. I am neither a Christian nor a feminist, and have already established that I am high enough on the fence to see and accept both sides of the issue. I did think of the examples you brought up, but arguments are not well-supported by exaggeration of this nature. Using that sort of worry-logic, I should never make a single statement about the harm sometimes resulting from native Canadians or native Americans, because of all the persecution they went through. I should avoid it because it might be seen as an echo of past grievances.
In case I wasn't clear on ssomthing, let me make it clearer now. I am not against masturbation and porn and the like, not a bit. If I cannot for some reason meet my lover's physical cravings at any given time, the only thing I ask is that she not go to another living breathing human being directly for what I cannot give her, and in turn I promise the same thing. I am not puritanical about physical feelings and do not feel it is traitorous to masturbate, read erotica, watch porn or whatnot. Those situations all involve self-stimulation of one form or another, and that's completely fine by me. I would never force someone who did not wish this particular requirement placed on them to bear it.
All fair points. You're right about the comparisons I'll concede all of that. And also you're right about not having forced it on anyone. I hate to sound trite but it all comes down to communication and what each party is willing to live with, but mainly about assumptions that cannot be made.
Not all women want what is stereotypically romantic, so for us guys raised in western society it is actually better to ask before buying the flowers if that is what she wants. Even not all wish to be served breakfast in bed or any number of things you've been perhaps raised to believe are ways to treat a woman. Again discussion does bring this stuff out.
I guess what we can take from this is that we can't do any less with what we mean by commitment: we can't assume but need to talk it over. And when you're in relationships and then a new medium comes into play like the Internet did, and then social networking did, you have to cross that rough patch with as much communication and mutual respect as possible.
Which if I read you right is what you refer to. There is a lot given to opinion now by some people but some who say they're holding to a old-fashioned view are really just mainly being respectful, I think. This is what I aim to achieve, though I aim I do miss quite a bit also. Honesty yes but tempered with the consideration for the feelings of the Other.
That's just it, Leo. I am a huge advocate of honesty. In an earlier post I suggested that honesty is absolutely crucial to any meaningful relationship between two or more human beings, sexual or otherwise. Without it, there is no integrity, no common ground. That said, you owe it to a friend, partner or even a fling to be as open and considerate as you can be. Open, in this case, meaning honest and not deceitful, rather than polyamorous.
I will give careful consideration to the feelings of my partner, and I hope for the same. Everybody slips up, does things they shouldn't, makes assumptions that result in hurt or confusion, and again, people owe it to one another to understand the complex nature of both the world and communication at large. not all slights are forgivable, but a great many are.
I'm going to try and get a good feel for limits, sore spots and points of shared interest before I get into a relationship. If she's exceedingly insecure, I'm probably going to balk. If she's particularly flirty, I'm also probably going to balk, at least a little. If it turns out after a little while that I just can't keep up to her, am not interested in most of the things she's interested in or generally don't feel I belong, I can deal with that.
While I have been taught a lot of your typical do's and don't's about relationships, I've also learned the most valuable lesson of all. Human interaction is organic. Let it grow. To hold to a previously-taught belief system purely out of beast habit can be treasonous to future partnerships if there is no other reason supporting your adherence to those structures. Use what works, by trial and error as needed, rather than simply quacking out the same old lines your parents tried to teach you. I'm old enough to know that, anyway.
I think most of us hold to the old dogmas and things more by accident than anything deliberate. Maybe I am slighting some but that is how I see it, more often than not anymore, that it is often unintentional.
And you're right about slights, but a heartfelt apology after careful consideration goes a long way. An apology with intent to do differently, at least.
And yeah,now open is co-opted as a term for the polyamorous ... something I think we're still going to find out if or how it works in today's society in general. I can see how it might with the human habit of migration being made much easier but there's a lot of sexology and psychology and other things I simply don't know and am not ashamed to say so. I will go so far as to say quite a few are more educated on here on human dynamics than I am. I just love paleoanthropology paleo-archaeology and other similar sciences but as an amateur not a real academic student of such.
ranting to people about things, listening to others when they need to vent, doing things together in the community, along with having sex, all bring us together, provide fulfillment for people, help us grow, and perhaps teach others a thing or two, as well.
so, leo is absolutely right, on the points he brings up about being able to survive without things, but the fact we shouldn't do so.
I meant to say this earlier, but I can't stand the, "you can't put sex on the same level as honesty," argument.
if people choose to survive without sex, and advocate that their relationships are just as fulfilling as those who need sex in their relationships, that's their choice.
in my mind, though, it's not a choice to admit the needs I have, that are totally natural to wanna experience as much as possible.
while technically, it can be said that I'm making a conscious choice not to deny such needs, I don't make the choice to be built with a high sex drive, or to, in turn, feel sex is essential, if I'm in a relationship with someone.
Chelsea, I stand by my stance. If you can demonstrate for me a relationship that's both meaningful and completely free of honesty, then I will accept your contention. Until then, since I can definitely show you relationships that are free of sex but still meaningful, I will continue to claim that sex is not equal to honesty. Remember, I'm not saying sex isn't important, or that you should have to go without it; it is important, and you should not have to forego it if you don't wish to.
Some food for thought!
I am going to ask some questions about monogamy, or people that swear they want it, must have it, and there is no other way to show love, respect, carrying, and togetherness for your mate.
Why what is called the 7 year itch acceptable?
Why does it even exist?
How many times have you heard, she or he cheated on me once, twice, three times, but we got through it. We had a few bumps, but have been together for 20 years.
How many times have you heard, well I’ve been cheating on him or her, but they’ll never know. I stopped, and I’ll never tell, so no harm done.
Why is acceptable for men to have mistresses, wives to have day time, or at work love affairs?
Why are there so many people with these type of relationships?
Why is indifferent happening, couples living under the same roof, but sleeping in separate beds, staying together when they don’t really want to, but are keeping the promise?
Why do couples insist on seeing your online history, having your passwords, checking on your schedules for work? You have heard, I have to check in to headquarters many times, why?
Why do so many Married, or attached men have hidden stashes of magazines, porn? Why do they have clubs they belong to that are actually meeting places for gay and bisexuals?
How many times have you heard the scenario, about “working late.”
How many times have you heard about women getting pregnant by other men but their husbands and hiding that fact until an emergency happens and the father learns he is actually not?
Why are so many paternal test demanded when a child is born that doesn’t seem to match?
Why so many women, and sometimes men, but mostly women are are the victims, sick with diseases, when they’ve been married faithfully?
Why do we need houses of prostitution?
How is it possible for this industry to make so much money?
Why do we have so many sex scandals in the community involving our upstanding citizens?
Why are so many men forced to Denbigh their children begotten in secret, or with another woman not their wives?
? (These things won’t happen to me, because I am going to make sure I have the right partner. I’m a Christian, and I’m getting married to a person in the church!”)
Do you know how many wives your minister has? Why it he’s been married more than once, but this is good in the sight of God, because he married the 6 women before he fornicated with them? Why is he on the pulpit on Sunday morning confessing his sins to his congregation, because he couldn’t resist that sister that was his personal secretary?
I am not, repeat, not starting a religious debate. This is not about religion, my above remarks, but monogamy.
To me it is easier to except my partner has needs, might change during the course of our relationship. I feel it is better to understand, know before it happens, and love them anyway because they are human and humans sometimes have desires they didn’t know they were going to have.
I prefer to allow my lover to live, and we love in openness, honesty, and understanding, not secrecy, forgiveness, and shame or sickness.
My lover never has to confess her or his sins in front of the critical people that wants to throw stones, jeer, and laugh behind her or his back.
My lover can stand up without shame and say, my lover loves me. Infract, it will never need to become public, because what can you report? Congresswoman was seen out with another man other than her husband, but she told us her husband approves. End of story. They can’t say it was sordid sex, or she was sneaking around. They can’t even prove it was a sexual relationship if the couple remains discreet while in public, now can they?
I saw him or her at the strip club last night, but after a few minutes, his or her partner walked in and set down and started to enjoy the show too.
Remember, I am not trying to change minds here, just explain why I think as I do.
I can’t help offending others, I know this, but that is not my aim.
We are having a discussion.
I would like to state my reasons for why I believe people stray in my next post. Openness keeps cheating from happening.
Here are what I believe to be reasons why people feel the need to stray, or seek other lovers when they have one.
I am talking about couples that have decided to be what I call one on one, not monogamous. Although in open, or what I like to think of as free relationships the couple that actually monogamous until they decide not to be jointly, or honestly.
The first reason is the person is not getting something they need. This could be variety in sex, time together, romance, treated like they are loved, or attention.
The next reason is they have found someone they think they’d like to experience sex with, or someone that turns them on. That has nothing to do with love for the person they are with, it is lust.
The thing about lust is, if you have it at home, and your partner does things to keep you excited, you don’t have much or any room to lust. If you do lust, you should be able to share this feeling with your partner so that you can experience the person safely, and freely.
The woman doesn’t have to sneak, so can pay attention to her birth control method, because it doesn’t have to be on the down low. A man can do the same. Both can take the person they want to be with to the family doctor for testing if they want to be sure they are safe, so you don’t have to be sneaking around. Strange, I know, but safer.
Sometimes people simply fall out of love. For whatever reasons it happens, it happens, and it is better to be honest about it than sneak about and cause more hurt on top of the lack of love.
If a person has a need to taste several people all the time, that person needs to get back single. They don’t need drama, force, guilt, and such things to stay in a relationship they can’t hold in, they need to get free, and be understood, so both parties can get what they need, not fight about one or the others problem.
Shep, I believe Chelsea is not saying that any relationship without sex is not meaningful. She is saying she requires sex in her relationship at this time, and does not want one without, because she will not be happy.
If she has to be in a sexless relationship, she doesn’t want to be, so would split with that person provided that person is not sick or had something major taken from them that is causing them to not be able.
In that case, she’d stay with them, because she loved them with the understanding that she requires sex, so will seek only that part with someone else.
Shep, I don’t know about you, but I and I’ll wager many others would prefer sex with a person over a toy or their hand.
If masturbation was able to replace sex with a person, many people would wait until they found exactly the right person before getting involved sexually.
We’d not have teen pregnancy, prostitutes, and that list goes on.
No, Shep, masturbation is not a lifelong substitute for person to person sex when you can get it. If you can’t get it, you have no choice, but if you can this would cause a person also to stray from the lover that can’t provide.
Then you have the sneaking around, because they can’t come to their lover and admit honestly masturbation isn’t cutting it honey without reprisals.
Remember, what I said about mind changing. Smile.
I have a question for people who argue that sex is integral to a fulfilling relationship, even as much as honesty. My relationship with Shepherdwolf is, on the whole, completely without physicality. We've been together for a year and a half now, and have only been able to spend time together a handful of times in that period. It's just not feasible right now, given that we live so far away from each other. Does that mean our relationship--outside of the few weeks we've been able to spend together--is unfulfilling? And let me make another point: I can tell you, right now, that if you are dishonest in a relationship, especially a long-distance one, it will fail. Every. Single. Time. At least it will if the dishonesty continues and becomes part of the whole relationship. You owe honesty to your friends, your family, and your romantic partner; if you want good relationships with people in general, honesty is the key. If you don't have honesty, you don't really have much of anything. But sex? ... No, I still very much enjoy my relationship in the overall absence of sex. It's not the ideal, no, and sometimes I wish things were different, but I know they eventually will be, and until then I am perfectly happy with what we've got. Am I a freak? Maybe, but I've never, ever seen sex as more than an important part of intimacy, and a strong desire at times. I've never seen it as a need (for myself) and never will.
Greg, I'm not advocating that you change your mind. as I keep saying, I'm simply participating in a discussion, which of course means sharing my thoughts.
do I wanna encourage people to think? of course I do. however, that isn't the same thing as wanting to change people's minds. far from it, in fact.
thank you, thank you, thank you, Wayne, for your last couple posts. they were beautifully written, not to mention right on the money.
you're exactly right in your interpretation of what I'm saying, so I won't bother repeating it.
on that note, though, yes, Meglet, I, personally, feel that relationships don't have much meaning, without the physical aspect. and, honestly, the fact you just said that you and Greg haven't spent much time together, makes me feel even stronger about my stance.
Chelsea,
I'm not necessarily trying to change your mind either, but to be perfectly blunt, I feel like you are currently holding a "the earth is flat" opinion about sex and honesty being equal. Everything else you've said has personal merit, or is a case of "not for me, but go for it if it works for you", but this point alone is...well, it's kind of incontestable, so I think it best to let it go at that.
Thank you, Meglet, for sorta summing up a lot of what I was thinking, and asking a thing or two I wanted to ask. I've done long-distance before, and I can tell you that it is very possible to establish and then cultivate a very healthy relationship, so long as the aim is to kill the distance one day. I suppose it might be all right, too, if both partners somehow were completely okay with the distance, but it seems a little like stunting to me.
Wayne, I admire some of what you're saying and bringing to the table, I really do. Can't say I agree with all of the conclusions you appear to draw, but I commend you for just coming straight out and saying this stuff.
As far as cheating, being trapped, sneaking around, being insecure, I believe, and have for a very long time now, that ninety percent of it is down to two things: communication and denial.
People expect a certain thing, and when it doesn't happen, instead of saying so, they sort of shove it under the rug and pretend it's okay.
People sometimes deny that anything is wrong, and do it so strenuously that schisms are formed.
Still others will admit that there's something rotten, will live with it quietly every day, but feel as if they must deny themselves change because of what others expect. Things like this make me very sad.
Let me be clear: I don't fully indulge the "if you don't like it, ditch it instantly" mentality so often apparent in today's culture. I think toughing it out sometimes is really the best way to live, beause you will learn a lot more that way. However, there are many things tolerated that don't need to be, and many points of honesty which are shied from instead of being embraced. If Meglet told me she found a guy she knew really attractive, I could deal with that head-on; it might be hard, but I could do it. If instead I found out she'd cheated on me instead, I would feel rightfully ambushed. However, I believe a healthy relationship fosters opennesss in this regard, the knowledge that your partner is, at the very least, going to hear you out and judge as fairly as they can. I don't advocate cheating or dishonesty in a relationship in any way.
One last point, since I feel this needs restating. At no point have I said or implied that Chelsea, or anyone else, doesn't deserve sex. She is free to choose a relationship on whichever grounds she wishes so long as she's willing to accept that an otherwise suitable match might pass her by because they do not fulfill a requirement. I think just about all of us have such requirements, so there's nothing wrong with it.
Wayne, one last thing. I know masturaation isn't good enough. I simply mean that it can suffice when it must. For monogamous people, when your partner is away and you get the urge, you either wait it out, see to it yourself or go satisfy it with someone else's help. Since the latter is cheating to a monogamous person, one of the other two choices is indicated. Do I want a relationship where I'm arbitrarily refused physical intimacy? No, I don't. Can I accept being turned down, going without and/or waiting for a chance, as opposed to just going off and getting pleasure from another available source? Hell yes.
Ahem, sorry about the typos. This keyboard is going to hell. If anything I've said doesn't make sense, just holler.
Meglet, I think if you think your relationship is fulfilling and good it is.
You do state you wish it were different however. How many years do you think you could continue this sort of relationship?
If you are content for now than it is good, and no one can decide or tell you it isn’t. This is a personal thing.
However, you can not disagree with someone that says a relationship such as yours would not work for them
What would happen to the person that tried a relationship like yours that wasn’t happy with it is they’d have to end it or cheat.
I’d like to add more to that, but I’m not here to change your mind, nor make you angry. What I’m here for, and I keep saying this, is to present the other view.
You have not seen me discount the monogamy view, only represent the other view.
I think what works for you is good.
I only question it due to all the things I’ve said before.
This is exactly what I mean about understanding.
sex and honesty are equal, to me, bottom line. obviously not in yours or Meglet's opinions, Greg. however, just as you both feel that particular thing isn't suitable to you, doesn't mean it isn't so to others.
on that same token, along with coming to this stance, I willingly accepted the fact that people will pass me by. I'll pass plenty of people by, as well, but it isn't specific to those who have a wider view of relationships. it's a fact of life. everyone does it.
Well I had been forming this post and got logged out. Shepherdwolf made some great points, and I am seriously on board with the no treachery.
The questions Wayne posed are all things I've seen multiple times in multiple places with otherwise honest hardworking people I would have never guessed beforehand. Had I cast a bet in any of those situations, I'd have lost every single one.
Another reason I say that a. I don't know anymore, and b. I take absolutely nothing for granted.
Sex, though like physical touch, is clearly more important to some than to others. Some would make great Catholic priests for all the sex or physical touch they don't seem to need. I don't know why I need to pet her hair or to have other physical parts of the relationship that aren't even directly related to sex, but without them I start getting depressed and it usually sneaks up on me. It's in the biology somewhere for some of us.
But since I've seen quite literally all that Wayne had written about with these relationships, and the accompanying dogma (religious and otherwise), not on these boards but in real life, all I believe I can ever say on the matter? Honestly I don't think I really know. And honestly, I will never take what I have for granted. Clearly there are no shoulds. And what might I have done differently if it were a different relationship? If she had done things differently? For the reflexive among us, I'm not saying it's her responsibility, I'm just flat out saying anymore I honestly have no idea. The expectations sure seem to be killing a lot of people, only I am one of the lucky survivors apparently.
Many people who are on the rocks or worse are, to coin an old expression, "way better Christians than I will ever be." They have the strong ideas on how things should and shouldn't be, they have all the faith-based or dogmas-based connections and actually are buying it, whichever brand of woo we're talking about. And when you see one where it went wrong, you're looking at the shell of a human being, like the walking dead. They've been gutted but are still alive.
This is why I'll never claim to any new couple that I know somehow what it takes to maintain. Because everything I have done so have others who are on the rocks or worse, and let's not forget that in these cases, many of them at least, masturbation as an outlet is very often seen as cheating by the party who doesn't want to participate.
I have never knowingly observed a relationship like Wayne and Chelsea are talking about, so there again, I don't know.
Some marriages break up, and some domestic partnerships stay together for decades or life. Remember, it wasn't that long ago, and still is among many, where people treated domestic partnerships the same way people now would view relationships like Wayne and Chelsea are talking about. The thinking goes that a domestic partnership is "easy come, easy go," never mind anyone at all familiar with contracts of any kind would realize it's actually a lot harder to disband an uncontracted relationship and divide assets, than it is to do so in a family court situation backed by a multi-billion-dollar industry.
For my part, I quite literally don't know, but do consider myself to be a very fortunate human being in the relationship department and will never take anything for granted, or lower it to a mere value judgment. Only in the relationship itself I try to remain appreciative, and about relationships in general try to remain intellectually honest and rational.
From a merely rational standpoint, if monogamy were software, you all would write to the company who wrote it and complain. Most your programs, the ones that run badly, or that you complain about, perform in the high 90s percent wise. Probably 40% of the monogamous relationships that I know of remain for very long, as in a decade or more, with no cheating, and in those even, quite a few end up with one partner saying sex or recreation aren't that important, the other goes along with it for a time and ultimately things fall to pieces.
This is, of course a rough estimate, and it's only my own experience, but it's a cross-section of atheists, Christians, Jews, you name it, wholehearted 90s sensitive guys who drank the Kool Aid and were later kicked to the curb when it wasn't fun for her anymore, women who got all expenses paid, but for the price of him never being there, and when he is, there's only time for a honey do list. Even lower working class people, who are often free from some of the more socially-conscripted charades we humans are really good at putting together aren't exempt.
I'm not saying Wayne and Chelsea's idea would do any better. But remember the software you complain about most, it usually performs in the high 90s percentage. And no company could stay afloat if they released software as buggy and inadequate as monogamy is at its best. This is not modern either, only people used to work harder to abide by socially conscripted charades, didn't live as long, and did a lot more sleeping around without getting caught. Remember, before the Internet, you needed a private investigator to find out someone was cheating. It's not worse now, trust me. All this shit I saw and knew of even in the early 80s when I was hitting puberty, only you never talked about it and the only answers were one brand of woo or another.
If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that we have far too high and lofty expectations of each other and ourselves, most of us working tirelessly to meet these and ultimately we turn up dead, and that is it. Dead after a lifelong list of should and shoudn'ts we humans are dreadfully inadequate at outgrowing the puppy habit of chasing our tails. In order to keep the Woo machines fed and happy, your history texts usually don't relay the sexual exploits of great monogamists like Thomas Jefferson. It took DNA evidence to show us that a whole family of blacks are all related to his family. Every brand of woo hates the hard sciences, because ultimately it proves out the truth of the situation as it actually is, not how we think it should be.
A few of us, myself included, are fortunate human beings in the relationship department, and yes there are rough spots. But I don't think people are really that easy-come easy-go about relationships anyway. That's more a catch-all phrase way of failing to admit what some of us will readily admit: that the science is unclear.
Oh and it's not like people aren't trying: there are marriage conferences, relationships conferences, often sponsored by one brand of woo or another, and usually given to dogmas and stereotypes about roles and things, but it's clear by watching them they are really making a go of it. This is clearly way more complex than any of us understand. Only perhaps Wayne and Chelsea's ideas may be more fault tolerant as a construct. May being the operative word, since we cannot know how well it will work in our society without a significant demographic, and relationships studies are most often handled by soft sciences who by definition don't really understand things like performance margins, and tend to cookie cut things to fit a dogma. I honestly don't know: I do know I've seen some amazing human beings who were hooked up to every brand of woo available, or no woo at all, whose relationships went south or they are miserable.
In no case have I ever really been able to say I was doing anything better. In fact, many would place their bet against me, for how I am detached from most human-inspired charades, and eschew all manner of 'shoulds', not for fuzzy bunny reasons but because they're usually not very reliable.
As an aside, do a study on fault tolerance as a concept in modern machines. Wikipedia may have an introductory article, I haven't looked. You'll note that most of what we have as human charades are far less fault-tolerant than the robots in our automobile factories, or even your basic computer programs.
Thank you for your candor, Chelsea; it's appreciated. We'll have to agree to disagree. :)
Wayne, you're absolutely right: I do want and expect things to change one day, but more for the physical touch and togetherness that the distance forces me to go without than for the raw pleasure and release of sex. Leo, I definitely don't classify myself as a "priest" when it comes to physicality; I'm just very good at going without if I know the reward will be worth it. I agree with Shepherdwolf in that a relationship founded upon distance that always remains thus is stunted. Wouldn't work for me, even if I am prepared to wait years for the kind of intimacy that I will eventually have. And, Chelsea, I see what you're saying about us not having spent a lot of time together, but let me tell you that, in a long-distance relationship two things typically happen: one is that you and your partner become intimately acquainted with each others' thoughts, desires, wants, needs,... everything about them that is so often neglected when physicality is present to take over. So many couples I know do not communicate, and being physically together allows that to happen. When your relationship is long-distance, it forces you to talk, to communicate, and of course it demands honesty and trust. The second thing that happens is that physicality, when you do get it, becomes much more special than it would otherwise. Every second I get to spend with my partner is suddenly ten times more weighty, more significant, and more precious. The physicality is, in some ways, even more important precisely because we don't get it a lot. I'm not sure if your implication was that since Shepherdwolf and I don't get to spend a lot of time together we mustn't know each other really well, or mustn't have as meaningful a relationship as others do, but if it was (which I doubt it was, by the way) I assure you that that's not the case.
To sort of add on to what Meglettsaid in her last post...well, the amount we seem to know each other, day to day, is just short of spooky at times. Giving examples would take awhile and would be sort of personal, so I won't...but I can assure you that what we lack right now in physicality we make up for in emotional attachment. With all due respect, I'm twenty-nine, passably intelligent and fairly emotionally stable, and at this point I'm not going to get into a relationship that has no long-term potential. I analyze everything, perhaps too much, so if I'm still in this relationship more than eighteen months in, I'd say there are excellent reasons why...reasons which, by their existence, may make it difficult for someone else to assert that the relationship is not working.
Okay, Chelsea. You say sex and honesty are equal to you. This means that when you become too old or infirm to be sexually active, you will also feel it is okay to stop being honest? If you stop providing one, then the other also becomes expendable? I think time and experience will prove you mistaken here, but perhaps I'll be wrong. No way to tell yet, I suppose. What I'm saying is, some day way down the road when sex becomes far too great a hassle to justify, I truly doubt you'll stop being honest, and thus honesty will prove itself the more important trait.
I am perfectly willing to accept that there's a great deal I don't know. Leo has a point when he says all that stuff about the soft sciences, and how relationship studies are skewed. The way I honestly see it is that if two or more people are engaged in a relationship, and no one is being unduly hurt, let them basically do as they please. I don't have to wish to do it myself for it to be okay. I don't have to even understand it completely. No justification is needed. Any discourse from me is pure curiosity and debate, nothing personal or sharp intended.
I concur with your point on curiosity. To be curious is to be human, after all. And you should not have to defend your relationship any more than an open relationship or some of us who are in long-term ones for decades.
All I know personaly of myself is that absence or time apart never served to enhance my relationships, on both sides things semed to more shrink than grow. There's simply too much we don't know,and perhaps can't, but individuals who know themselves enough to know what they can and can't tolerate? You can't ask for more than that.
Again, I say you shouldn't have to justify your relationship just because it is an online relationship now. People used to question these when they were overseas pen pal type things also, and sometimes they worked out and sometimes they did not. If both of you are getting what you want out of it, it's your mutual call and yours alone.
For equally curious souls, here is a Youtube video by TheBadCop69, a guest blogger and vlogger for the Sexual Futurist.
Anyway he tends to take topics in multiple directions but the scientific study he is looking at is an interesting find: Monogamy linked to reduction of infanticide, where mammals who are monogamous are usually those who are otherwise given to infanticide.
Anyway if you're curious, take a look. He makes a case for polyamory just as the bisexuals did 20 years ago: a polyamorist can select to be in a monogamous relationship but the individual is still polyamorous by nature.
Anyway more for the discussion and curiosity.
And for those that would skip the video and go straight for the descriptions, here is the write up from Oxford University.
Also remember about relationship that are started through letters or wife searching services.
In the 1800's this was popular. A couple would exchange a few letters and one would travel to meet the other and they'd marry. They'd stay together period.
Here is another point that is being missed. When Chelsea or I get to old to perform sexually, or for any reason at all, and our partners still need sex, we feel it is better to let them go than to hold them.
So sure Shepherd, when I'm to old, and my 30 40 50 year old wife still requires sex, I want her to have it. I want her to be honest.
It is better to be alone in peace than to be with someone that really doesn't want to be there.
It is better to be with a person that will stay with you, love you in all other respects, but get this need met than to be alone.
I know, that's difficult to see, because most people want that person to give up what they must give up. I don't.
Think about the person that comes back from war. He or she is maybe late 20's so the spouse is also late 20's. Do you really think if fair for her or him that is healthy to give up sex for life?
They have 2 things they can do or 3 if I add giving up sex. The can give up sex for life, leave the person totally alone and move on, or stay with the person, love them, be there for them, help them in all other ways, but now and again get some sexual pleasure from a real person, not a toy, or hand.
If I were the hurt one, I'd want my lover to stay, and live. Smile.
Oh and this notion of the elderly not having sex or becoming too infirmed for it reminds me of my childhood. I had no idea people still thought like that anymore. With Viagra, Cialis, and other drugs, plus better life situations for elderly people, we have new very sexually active relationships in the elder assisted living facilities.
Crumpled is the image of poor Grandma in a shawl and Grandpa missing his teeth, and netither having gotten any for decades.
Here is an interesting find:
The Frequently Asked Questions section from the alt.polyamory newsgroup.
I found it very educational, to be honest.
Just as polyamorists are demonized for being selfish now, this is exactly how the bisexuals were treated in the 90s. And this is also how partners who live together but are not married were treated. The sex-is-not-everything arguments were used in those cases also,and even still are by people I know who are critical of people living together without being married first. It's so uncannily similar you'd think all they did was find and replace bisexual with polyamory, or living together with polyamory, or pick your favorite vilified group with polyamory.
I certainly have had, and probably still have, a lot of misconceptions on the issue. Only at this point I cannot ignore the fact that the way it gets portrayed is exactly what happened to single mothers, people living together, bisexuals, and a lot of other demographics.
Meglet, you posed a question about what I thought of your current relationship, which I answered honestly. you then said you disagreed with me, as I was certain you would, even before I replied. that makes me wonder why you asked it in the first place, though. did you genuinely wanna know, or were you trying to see if people who share my views would waver?
also, I'm with leo, on a few things, one of which is the fact that distance doesn't make anything grow stronger. it makes things far worse, which is why I'd never enter into a long distance relationship with someone (not just cause I can't have sex with the person, either). like leo, it makes me miserable, which is exactly the way I choose not to live.
clearly, though, as leo also says, sex is far less important to some people than it is to others.
I, too, am surprised that people still experience shock value like Greg's, when hearing that old people can, and still do, enjoy sexual activity. however, to answer the question of what I'd do when I become the old person (hell, as was also stated by me, it isn't only old people that become unable to perform sexually) I'd let them be free to get their needs met elsewhere.
I, like Wayne, wouldn't want my partner to give up anything, ever, which is exactly why I take the stance I do with regard to relationships. so, I'm puzzled as to why that was even a question, honestly.
I think old people having sex is nasty but that is because I am to yung to understand. :)
Chelsea, I asked because I wanted to know. You answered, I thanked you for your honesty and said it was appreciated, because it really was. And can I not disagree with your arguments and still appreciate your opinions? Can I not think differently than you do, but still enjoy hearing what you have to say? It wasn't a trap question, it was an honest question; I don't waste my time trapping people.
And, to mention another point: some of you don't enter into long distance because it weakens things for you or makes you miserable. Just as I wouldn't enter into an open relationship as I am now because it would weaken things and make -me miserable. To each his own.
I forgot to ask this earlier, but Greg, how in the world do you come to the conclusion that someone with my views would become dishonest the older they get?
I seriously, seriously don't get how anyone could think old people having sex is nasty, but somehow, younger people having it is supposed to be seen differently? how so?
That I agree with, Chelsea. Why should they have to stop just because they hit some kind of arbitrary cutoff? I don't think that's quite what Gregg was getting at, but to address the point in general: why should it be nasty?
Meglet, thanks for your answer. I don't waste my time with things, either, but considering what a hard time some people are having grasping this concept, I felt I had to ask.
No problem, Chelsea; I tried to be honest without seeming sharp. I hope that came across.
I think Meglet's description of how she would see open relationship for herself, was apt.
My wife got nauseated and even cried, after watching part of Sister Wives. Now that religious polygamist situation seemed very suffocating to me no matter man or woman. Surely, the women get the help with the kids, and this I believe. The evolutionary tradeoff of monogamy is the frequent isolation felt by stay-at-home parents with young children. All evolutionary adaptations have tradeoffs that cost, and sometimes cost lives, and monogamy is certainly one of those.
I was not nauseated to observe the situation on that show, though like I said I spoke up enough to say this would not be some man's easy road: he has to pay for it all, spend time with, and keep track of, all of it, plus the intensive amounts of religious demands imposed by a patriarchal religious system like that which seemed suffocating to me. But that was before I heard of open relationships or polyamory, which to me seems the total opposite. It would certainly be fraught with its own problems, and is not for anyone with hidden hangups or the faint of heart, this is for certain.
But I have seen firsthand what Meglet was talking about, and that was just on the TV. So apparently, whether it's the resource drive, protection against infanticide, or what have you, there's pretty much a biological response in some people. Usually it's women, acting out the traditional vulnerable role. I don't know if one could call the male jealousy counterpart biology or maybe just a bad temper, I have no idea. While I'm sure the wife could do something to make me jealous, I guess I tend not to possess that trait very much. This is not a high ground I simply have not contended with that issue the way some do.
So long as we continue to try and understand, I think things can only change for the better monogamists or not. Certainly there are things to be learned from one group by another, this is being human.
Oh and the one episode of that Sister Wives that I did watch, while the religion and expectations seemed stifling to me, as relationships they seemed relatively happy, each helping each other with mutual challenges, so it wasn't all on him to have to emotionally support every single one for every single thing. The guy in that show, if he was being real (it was just a show after all), appeared to me to be sort of an alpha male. Me not being one of those I could not so much relate, but the polyamory seems to be more egalitarian and less top-down than the polygamist show was.
First off, please please do not ascribe to me and my words things that are not there. I did not at any point express shock at older people having sex. I did not in any way say that older people do not or should not have sex. Some lose the drive, some do not. It's better now than it used to be, owing to the aforementioned drugs and to society in general. There is no arbitrary cutoff point beyond which old people having sex is wrong.
Chelsea, I'm not saying that you're going to be dishonest, but that's precisely my point. You say sex and honesty are equal for you, yet you accept that you may not be able to provide one without thought to the other. What's more, you seem to accept, if tacitly, that you will always be willing and able to provide honesty, yet not always willing or able to provide sex. From a purely literal angle, then, honesty is worth more, and is not equal to sex.
I really really wish that what I said was being taken into account, rather than twisted interpretations of what I've said instead. That whole shock thing, regarding old people having sex, seems to have come straight out of left field, and entirely missed the point I was making.
That was my fault not Chelsea's. I'm sorr, I reacted, and you're right. I had a similar reaction to finding out that some young people now still think the pull out method works.
It actually says more about some of us when we were younger, rather than your words, because we actually did think some of that stuff about elders and sex. Surprise to some people now and I understand it sounds pretty ignorant now.
It was just a surprise, and obviously at least on my part, a misread, not so much of a particular post but just the idea of a way of thinking some of us are embarrassed to have had when we were younger, still being around. Not an excuse, merely an explanation.
Meglet, sharpness is a fact of life. I can take it. if I couldn't, I certainly wouldn't dish it out myself.
back to the topic, though. Greg, how could that not be what you were getting at, when you specifically asked me what I would do when I become old, and, in your mind, unable to perform sexually?
you even followed up that statement by saying that honesty would, again, in your mind, become the most important value to me, when I've never said, or implied, that I'd be dishonest with anyone (including myself) at any point in life.
Greg, as do many others, I'm sure, seem to have a hard time with the fact that Wayne and I are so willing to let someone be so free, even though we've agreed to be with them.
I think that's hard to digest, for most, cause they totally misunderstand its meaning.
they're thinking that it means we have trouble committing, being emotionally/otherwise invested in our partners, that age will somehow change our minds, based on the notion that old people don't have sex, or have less of it, or that, when we get old, we'll suddenly become dishonest.
I'm 25 (26 in a couple of months), and unlike most my age, I know who I am, what I stand for, what makes me happy, and what doesn't. I'm also smart enough to know, and admit that unexpected things will happen, at any time, which is the first thing to note, when I'm talking about being in an open relationship.
another thing that's clearly being misunderstood, is the fact that, in wanting to have open relationships, Wayne and I aren't saying that we'd absolutely be with multiple people at one time. we're saying the exact opposite, which is that, given that there's no telling what might happen in life, we feel it's best to leave room for the fact nothing is set in stone, and we don't want our partners (or ourselves) to feel locked into something when the person doesn't wanna be, or can't be, for whatever reason.
I realize I'll be in the minority, here, but when the expectation is automatically placed on me that I'm gonna be faithful to one person, no matter what happens in life, I won't have that. in my younger days, I went for it, cause it's how we're conditioned to think is the only way to live. however, life experience, along with the fact I'm a more deep thinker than most, has taught me otherwise. age has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
oh, and, it was margorp who said that old people having sex was nasty.
Ah, Leo, I remember sister wives. I only saw a couple of episodes so I don't recall much of it, but I remember having issue with only one small aspect: these women were expected to be perfectly okay with sharing their husband's time amongst themselves (and anyone else he might marry) but he "feels sick" at the idea of any of them having another partner, sexually or otherwise. That's a direct quote and i remember it because it stuck with me. That's a double standard I absolutely do not accept. At least what Wayne and Chelsea are advocating is about fairness and freedom.
However, I really don't think that choosing one partner makes anyone a less deep thinker, a puppet of society, or what-have-you. It's just preference. Sure, conditioning is involved--how could it not be? Conditioning is always going to be there, there's no true escape from it. But choosing to be faithful to one partner does not have to signify ultimate selfishness. I'm not tying my partner down, he can leave any time he wants, and he holds himself to the same standards I do, so there's absolutely no suggestion of a ball and chain aspect. Many many people have very happy relationships, be they open or otherwise, so I think there are merits to both, just as they both have their drawbacks.
Chelsea, sharpness may be a fact of life, but it does not have to be and I try not to use it when it is not absolutely necessary. I value honesty far above being snarky or extra blunt when it's not required. I find that I get farther that way, just speaking for myself here.
Meglet, we'll have to agree to disagree on a few things, one of which is the fact that, in my view, choosing to be faithful to one person and one person only, is selfish.
now, just cause I feel that way, doesn't mean that I see it as being wrong, just as I don't see anything wrong with people wanting to be less blunt than others, if they see fit.
my bluntness has actually gotten me farther in life, much like you feel another approach is more suitable for you.
I've never said that monogamy is wrong, or any other term people wanna direct at me. as I've stated repeatedly, all the relationships I've been in have been monogamous, so how I could see something wrong with monogamy, is beyond me.
knowing that detail, combined with the fact that I've also said that being faithful to one person isn't an issue for me, should make things clear.
I never saw that, though I saw the show in passing. Like you I would have been put off by that double standard. Then again no surprise in a patriarchal religion like theirs.
I concur with your assessment: anyone who thought becoming a poly or open or rwhatever was going to fix things, or was the new cool in club, would be in for a very sharp realization I imagine. Much like people that thought it most progressive to date interracially.
Mainly I challenge preconceived assumptions, in myself first, because more often than not when I went along with society's conditioning I have ended up suffocated or hurting people by accident or simply confused as to why I was at a particular place and time, none of it making any real sense. I being in a long-term committed relationship would be arguing myself to the bottom of th pile to claim polyamory was the cool club or some form of more enlightened state. It's more like you learn there are more valid ways than one by which people do things.
Happens all the time outside of relationships or sex or sexuality. You see people even struggle and work their way into and out of things like blended family situations, even adoptions face the same critique the poly people do. I'd know, being an adoptee.
I've been watching this board closely because I've been wanting to enter back into the debate when time permitted. And so, now that I have a little bit of time, here's my take, and a few questions:
I wonder something: I'm curious to know, for those of you who prefer the idea of an open relationship, and even those of you who dont' adopt it in your lives personally but are open to the idea as a theory--Why do you say it's more liberating? Why do you also say it's less selfish? Also, leo, you said that polyamory is not for the faint of heart or those with hidden hangups...Are you suggesting that those who are naturally monogamous have hidden hangups? I personally dont' think so.
I'm not putting down polyamory. I satated on many occasions that it's not for me, and I'm completely ok with the idea that it might make someone happy. But I have a bit of a bone to pick: Even those of you who feel that monogamy is no worse than polyamory tend to imply that somehow, polyamory is more suitable. Why?
My version of monogamy is not tied to religious or societal pressures. I'm an atheist and have no political or important social standing to speak of, economicly speaking. I also grew up in a single-parent household, where my mother never instilled in me the idea that marriage is the ultimate life goal or something to that effect.
YetI choose monogamy. I thin I've explained this before, but monogamy to me doesnt' mean that I have to be with the same person for ever and ever and ever amen. lol
For me, it means that for the duration of the relationship i'm in, I choose to associate romantically and sexually with that person, not anyone else. I'm not making my partner sign some implied contract in blood or stone that says he needs to be with me no matter what, that he cant' leave if he's unsatisfied. So how is that selfish. He can leave if he chooses to, just like I can choose to not put up with something he deems in necessary in his lifestyle. I dont' see that as selfish, because in my version of monogamy, both parties actually want the same thing--exclusivity. How is that trapping. You can't force or encourage people to experience something they're not interested in experiencing anyway.
I think it's the curse of "normalcy". People might advocate an individualistic society, but really, most people think that its their way or no way. The thing is, humans are so diverse that you can't possibly expect them to have only one manner of doing things, and that includes something even as universal as relationships. I'm not about to tell anyone their relationship is lesser than mine, and I think that if it harm none, do as you will. Openness, after all, is often the only way forward.
That being said, being slightly more "traditional" can and does work for many, and I don't feel I should have to defend my choices, any more than a person in an open relationship should have to defend theirs. If it works for me, or for them, that should be good enough for everyone. Doesn't mean that you can't have a discussion about the hows and whys, it just means that one group has absolutely no right to demonize the other.
For the sake of clarity, I didn't see Bernadetta's post till I'd replied myself, so my post was directed at Leo's last and not at Bernadetta's.
Bernadetta, thank you for your post. You've summed up some of the things I've been trying to get across about how my partner isn't trapped. And while it may be Christians or feminists or whomever who have established monogamy, I'm neither a Christian nor a feminist nor any other thing that you can label. I can't be lumped into any social, political, or religious group. I am who I am, and I have no leanings or strong loyalties to any ideology or group. Yet I'm monogamous... Why? Because it works for me. It's what's comfortable, it's what's most fulfilling, it's what I most enjoy being. So while I respect open relationships and acknowledge that they can and do work (and beautifully at that) I really don't see myself as horribly selfish. How can you call a person in a monogamous relationship selfish, then demand that they not call you selfish for wanting multiple partners or getting your needs met when your partner cannot readily satisfy them? I don't understand how such a double standard can be upheld, myself.
Chelsea, I'm starting to get just a bit frustrated. This will not be the first time you have first made an assumption and then proceeded on that assumption to the discredit of a stance I am upholding.
In this instance, you are assuming that I believe older people don't have sex on the basis of what I said about you. Remember all that stuff you said about your legs? You're not even thirty, you're younger than me, and you already have a strike against you, physically speaking, that you cannot in any way improve as far as I'm aware. Biologically, as you age, things slow down, get nastier; this is true of almost every disease and malady of humanity and, even when it isn't strictly true, I have never seen a single affliction that gets any better with age, with the possible (and only theoretical exception) of migraines, which aren't at question here. In other words, you're young and you're already wondering whether or not you can provide; that is only going to get worse if you're older. And if a person was perfectly healthy, he or she would almost certainly have slowed down at seventy in comparisson to how he or she was at twenty-five. When I say that older people may struggle having sex, or when I say that you yourself may reach a point where it becomes impossible for you, I am speaking purely about anatomy and biology here. People wear out. People get tired. It's not something we can currently expect to avoid until we die at the ripe old age of ninety-two. All that being true, please don't twist or misinterpret my words. If you are unsure, ask, but in the meantime I urge you to bear in mind that I do seriously consider what I say before I say it, particularly in writing. It doesn't mean I can't be wrong, but it does mean I'm probably not going to shoot myself in the foot, figuratively speaking, out of hand.
Now that that bit of business is out of the way, I wanted to thank both Bernadetta and Meglet for what they've said, as it kinda sums up how I feel. Agreements to be open, to be willing to seek other partners if one wishes, are more permissive by design, but are in no way inferior or superior to monogamous commitments. In my view, a monogamous person is not committed to stay with their chosen partner till death if it just isn't working. They've both agreed to standards, just as have the participants of an open relationship, and until one person cannot abide those standards, the agreement is apt to work for all involved. Honestly, on that particular point, I don't know why there's so much dust in the wind.
I don't know why, either, especially when I've clearly stated my thoughts, and don't feel I can make them any clearer to you all.
I do have a couple things to say, though.
Meglet, I wasn't implying that those who believe differently than me, were puppets, nor was I implying that people who have certain views were deeper thinkers than others. I used the word "I" for a reason, which obviously gets lost online sometimes, given my bluntness.
being open to having multiple relationships with others is not selfish for the simple reason that it isn't about me, or Wayne, or whoever you wanna put there, when it comes down to it.
first and foremost, it's about wanting to do what's right by the person or people we're with, which means not expecting that either one of us should automatically be faithful to one person, and being honest about the fact that they're free to be with others, as well as allow you to do so.
although you all obviously disagree on this point, by saying, "I expect my partner to be faithful to me, and I her," or something to that affect, you're not enabling freedom for that person.
it seems we're just going back and forth, though, so unless I have something else to say, I'm not gonna continue pushing this car up a huge hill.
Chelsea, you're failing to accept the flip side of your coin.
If you were willing to say "my partner can seek their needs any way they wish, but I'll stay faithful", then you'd be absolutely right in saying that you weren't being selfish. But the moment you demand a relationship with sex, and thereby suggest that you might embark upon a relationship where you would expect the exact same freedom you grant your partner, that desire is selfish. Before I go any further, let's note that selfishness is not, by its nature, a bad thing. Selfish behavior will sometimes keep you alive and will often be the right choice, it just depends on where and how.
This whole thing really isn't up for debate. If you want to label me selfish for telling my partner that she will lose me if she seeks physical pleasure from others, then I will with equal rights call you selfish for telling your partner that he or she must be okay with you getting your needs met elsewhere in the event that they are unable themselves to satisfy you. You might say, "My partner agreed to give me freedom". Well, okay, but my partner agreed to both accept a similar limitation as she placed on me. If your partner consenting to this agreement makes you less selfish somehow because you're not tying a stone round their neck, then it liberates me in precisely the same fashion when an agreement is made with my partner and I. There are simply no two ways about this.
Thanks, Shepherdwolf. Very nicely said.
Furthermore, I'd like to add the following. How is a monogamous person being selfish when he or she is fulfilling the same monogamous needs of their partner.
What if, say, my partner thrives on a simp.e guarantee that if he goes overseas this week, for instance, and he returns a few weeks later, I wouldn't have taken up with someone else for the sake of companionship in the meantime. what if to a monogamous person, the idea that people see each other as worth waiting for is a beautiful thing? Does it make me selfish then to comply with my partner's wishes and not sleep with someone else while he's away? No. Not even in the eyes of someone who thinks that open relationships work best, because if I were to wait, I presumably wouldn't be getting my needs met.
Here's what it boils down to, people. Whatever relationship you're in, whatever you decide to agree to, a successful relationship will thrive on the simple philosophy of give and take. Each partner has to ive a little and be satisfied enough to stick around, even in an open relationship.
Because, I can't imagine that even though you might agree to an open relationship, you don't feel even a little bit of selfish sorrow that your partner has gone to seek out someone else to pay them attention. To feel no twinge of some sort of relative pain or something to that effect would make you superhuman. And believe me, I doubt anyone here is superhuman.
So in that sense, yes, you're giving your partner the right to leave and pursue romantic or sexual experiences as they see fit, and you're taking the same liberty for yourself, should you need it. See? Give, and take!
In monogamy, you're giving your partner the satisfaction of a guarantee that during yrou mutually agreed upon relationship, you won't be with anyone else. And that's giving. And you're taking from them the security and the same guarantee that he or she is offering you during the relationship. Again, give and take.
There's no relationship that I've ever known of working without a good amount of give and take from each party involved. And that, in my theory, is why people fall apart. they dont' have a good balance of give and take in their relationship, and they lack communication on top of that. that's one reason why all those scenarios that wayne presented keep happening. People dont' think a lot fo the time before they enter into a relationship. Sometimes, people grow up with the romantic notion of: I'll get married, and he'll treat me great, and I'll have the happily ever after. And then they find someone they could possibly do that with, and they jump the gun without really asking the important questions.
Along the same lines, people aren't honest with themselves. Some people handle monogamy better than others, quite obviously. That doesn't make one better than the other, but it does matter a whole lot if a person isn't true to his or her nature.
If I were to say that today, I'm embarking on an adventure of polyamory, I'd eventually become one miserable chick. I'd want to wring the neck of the man I'm in an open relationship wth...Of course that's an exaggeration--But you get my point. But I wouldnt' truly be mad at him, I'd be mad at myself for denying myself the comfort and the happiness of monogamy. Thats' what aI thrive on, that's where I see purpose.
I want to create a family and buy a house and raise a kid, on and on and on, and I dont' see myself doing that if we're both running off with someone because of lust on a whim. That being said, if my partner told me today that he wishes to be in an open relationship, that he needs more than one person to satisfy him, I'd be willing to release him from our agreement so that he and I could both pursue what we each want.
Here's one last thing: I find it curious, wayne, that you say via your philosophy you illuminate cheating in your life... Well, you may be illuminating betrayal n the basis of the honest agreement with yoru partner, but who's to say that, after years or months of exclusivity, if you make use of the agreed upon open relationship and enjoy the company of another woman, who's to say your main partner won't feel hurt nonetheless. Just because you agree to something doesn't mean that feelings dont' get in the way. Sleeping with someone outside of yoru relationship may cause trouble for the other partner potentially, even if you did ideally agree upon the fact that you should both be open to doing so. I dont' care if you call it cheating, or experiencing life, or sleeping with someone else, or having an affair, or enjoying someone's company...If it walks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Doesn't matter what you call it. In the end it is what it is. And as you said once here before, still, even with your idea of openness, hearts can be broken. In my next post, I'll outline an example of what I mean, one I experienced directly.
Ugh, typos. Sorry guys. I meant the word "illuminate" in my last post, as you all may presume.
Anyway, moving on, I was in a brief open relationship once. I was really young, wanted to be open minded, and the person I was after really didn't want to be with just one person as he was young, and on and on. I had strong feelings for him, and so I said, why the hell not, right? I'll go ahead and try this. So we agreed on honesty. We were both in college, he wanted to experience other people, and he did. He told me so as it came to be, and though I agreed to it, and he was being honest, I felt frankly like shit. I felt confused, I didnt' feel comfortable, and he urged me to pursue other relationships as well, but that made me feel uncomfortable too. So yes, he'd be honest and tell me all about his experiences--wel not all about them,but you catch my drift, and I'd sit and listen. And I'd tell myself: well you feel like shit, yes that's true, but can you fault him? You agreed to it. He was being honesty.
So see, I learned on my own skin how badly an open relationship could work out for me personally. I had to be honest with myself and I quickly reverted to considering only monogamous relationships, because I knew that's what I wanted. So there...Just because you're being honest, doesn't mean your not going to hurt or be hurt. I honestly gave the relationship a shot. I honestly tried to keep an open mind to the idea of an open relationship in my personal life. I didn't expect the guy to change his mind and want monogamy--I just wanted to experience being with him, and see if I couldn't thrive in an open relationship. I experienced being with him but it was a miserable experience. So no. The approach of pure honesty, brutal honesty, and an open attitude doesn't always guarantee that you feel free or happy, or fulfilled.
There you go. lol. The only way you can experience true individual freedom is if you do what works for you. I feel free in practicing monogamy. It fulfills me. Therefore I can't honestly see how polyamory can be beneficial or liberating--at least not for me and those who are monogamous by nature.
Monogamy can only be a trap to those who dont' put an effort into the balance of give and take, who don't communicate, and also for those who aren't cut out for it.
I've read about stories like yours. I'll put my answers to your prior questions in a next post because it logged me out.
But in no way was I insulting any of us in the supermajority.
I only said the poly lifestyle is not for the faint of heart, or one could not have hangups, because for now at least it's a severe minority, no matter how some may or may not imagine it to be progressive. Me I don't know.
The reverse would be absolutely true of monogamy where poly was the norm. Then, those of us like myself who have kind of gone along with the status quo and frankly never thought about anything outside of it (until recently) would be cautioned that monogamy would not be for the faint of heart, nor for anyone with hangups. Because life on the fringes, no matter how cool some may think it is, is unbelievably difficult. I can't imagine: I've enjoyed the privileged status of being in the supermajority of civilized humans who are monogamists and who never gave it a second thought.
I did say that anyone venturing to be poly it is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for anyone with hangups, because the status quo is for such people. Whatever that status quo may be. If you're the rare individual who has actually thought it through then selected monogamy, which some arguments on here sound like, that is really not just going with the status quo like most of us, myself included. I'm not unhappy, I'm not alluding any of that.
I personally have a lot of questions as to what is selfish and what is self-less, or if there are cases where the same act is a bit of both.
But life on the fringes is hard, and this is why I said what I said. Ask anyone 25 to 30 years ago who interracially dated, perhaps to show they were cool and in and part of the new thing, and you'll find out it's the same thing.
It would be the same thing for us, and probably was for some of our ancestors, who went monogamous.
If you thought this stuff through and actually selected monogamy, all I can say is, you put a lot more thought into it than most of us have. To your credit.
It's always a challenge if you explore the positives of the minorities, just like the anti-gay people would get upset if we would mention lower crime rates in gay neighborhoods, etc. It's a bit threatening to go from absolute majority to supermajority, but this is not really being persecuted. We monogamists enjoy an immense amount of privileges, especially those of us heterosexuals who happened to not be in an interracial relationship. We enjoy the privilege of being the supermajority, having our ways unquestioned, even being assumed, and assuming ourselves, that ours is the de facto and even done by nature itself. If you are not that, and you selected the majority view by thoughtful choice, than in my opinion you have as much credit as the poly or others on the fringe, because yours was not tacit acceptance but you thought it through. Most of us, myself included, went with the de facto.
That isn't wrong, but it's not as credible as some who have written your own treatises on monogamy, it appears anyway, as ones who deliberately understood all your options and picked.
Again, I am not the least unhappy, but I cannot put myself in the same category as a poly or a monogamist who thought it through and made their selection, as it seems some of you have. And I understand the reaction: Positives are made of a fringe situation, some of which may not exist within a lot of monogamist relationships, and that is a threat as perhaps we monogamists move from absolute majority down a level to super majority. But that's still pretty high and we're still pretty privileged as it pertains to perception by the masses. And it's not likely to change drastically in a single lifetime.
Also understanding where things come from doesn't diminish any individual relationship. In fact knowing that monogamy is based on ownership only serves us in the majority because for all kinds of reasons that will never really change so long as we have what we have as a society and economic structure. That doesn't mean your relationship or mine in particular are based on that, but as any of us privileged to have a marriage license knows, things go amazingly easier contract wise and many other ways, simply because that is how property and other assets get transferred. I for one don't know how the poly will ever manage that stuff.
Again, I wasn't threatening us in the massive supermajority called monogamy: we're the privileged lot. However, I stand by what I said, not because of a poly relationship, but because to engage in anything on the fringes of acceptance is not for the faint of heart, and you can't afford hangups out there. We can, though some of us have said they don't have any. I probably have a few, I've certainly been educated on some things in the past year that I had no idea existed in our society. I've gone from "My god these people are from Mars," to an amateur anthropological look, to critically seeing what's written about theirs and what I have seen of ours, and acknowledging the differences. Some good, some not so good, maybe some simply indifferent. It's hard to do, since nobody challenges the supermajority, or demonstrates how a fringe might do some things better. And I have underscored might, on this one, because to my mind, the jury is still out. We simply cannot know yet. We have around 2.5 million people in the U.S. now declaring themselves in these open relationships, with mixed results, a few positives that certainly would astound us in the privileged supermajority. Certainly have astounded me, as one who never thought about any of this but went along with the crowd, as it were.
But yes, it always takes guts to do life on the fringe, and if you're going to do it, you have to be ready for it. Maybe here is one of my own hangups, but I am afraid this could turn out like the interracial dating thing, where we used to see people do it because it was edgy and different, progressive, avant guard and cool. Only you're messing with fellow human beings. It never worked out. The genetic diversity that comes from interracial couples cannot be denied, however, and it serves populations, as much as that statement upset the supermajority at the time. That doesn't negate us in the supermajority who didn't interracially reproduce, or those of us myself included who are in the supermajority of people not doing open relationships. It doesn't even negate many of us, myself included, who could never see ourselves in open relationships. It would be really difficult for positive claims about a tiny minority to in any way impact us supermajority types. Something akin to throwing a thimble at a castle.
And if you're one who actually knew about other options but thought all this stuff through, you're kind of a small minority too, since most of us in the supermajority just accepted what was without real question and went along with it. That's not wrong, it's just nothing special, it's part of the massive machinery that is us. Without the fringes, we'd probably learn a lot less, and without the supermajorities things would no doubt go off the rails. People on the edge have to sometimes learn to cool their jets, and us in the super majority have to realize it's okay if there are a few things some minor outlier groups are doing that may be something we can learn from. Especially those of us who never considered any of that stuff before. My marriage isn't threatened by gays getting married, and if they have a really small divorce rate maybe I can learn something. My monogamy isn't threatened by a new group of poly people, and maybe there's something I can ultimately learn from that as well. But we're the super majority, and we're the de facto, so nobody's threatening us.
At least those of us monogamy types who never thought about any alternatives. Sounds like some of you did and actually selected, which seems like a whole nother group, maybe a bit longer lasting as monogamists than those of us who just took it all for granted? Maybe?
Wise words, leo. I truly enjoy your posts. Maybe you should change your username to "the zone's voice of reason".
I for one think that the reason that people see certain social arrangements, etc. as a given is to blame for why relationships don't work out.
Because people who are just going along in life and defacting to the norm, as you said, won't think twice to see what they'd do if, as wayne demonstrated in a previous post, they found themselves lusting for someone else. Many people don't think twice about what kind of damage it causes a partner to be dishonest, to sneak around...And many people don't think twice to adapt to their true nature as opposed to their environment.
Take this, for instance. If luke's dad and brother and sister and all his aunts and uncles and cousins are going to be married, luke assumes that he should do so as well. so luke finds a girl he could possibly settle down with, but he's in denial about all the other girls he'd really like to screw along the line. He's in denial about the fact that he finds it thrilling to sleep with a different girl every week, as perhaps he did in college. Luke tells himself that he was just young and sewing his oats, so to speak. And now it's time to settle down. because brian did it, and sean did it, and eric...You get my point. But maybe sean and eric actualy have no problem with being with one woman at a time, while luke really hates the prospect.
So my point is, it would certainly benefit to think--something I'm always so shocked to realize so few people do.
Fantastic stuff, Leo, thank you for such a thought-provoking post. As for the voice of reason, I think Sugarbaby already stole that one, but I agree with the sentiment, Bernadetta.
I don't really have much else to say at the moment because Leo and Bernadetta have done it all for me. All I'll say is this: no matter your desire to be open and free and liberated and "cool", don't try to deny your nature. If you're polyamorous, be polyamorous and don't try to force yourself to be happy in a monogamous relationship. If you're monogamous, accept that you are and be happy with it. There is nothing wrong with seeing a person as worth waiting for, as Bernadetta has so aptly said. I know that one really, really well.
I can't say that I thought this stuff out long before ever getting into this, but what I will say is that I was able to take a good long look at why I like what I like. Probably makes me a minority.
Thanks for the nice post, Leo. It makes a lot of sense. I agree with the "don't resist your nature" idea in cases like this. I do think "the norm" can oftentimes limit us. It gives us fences, and because we're sheep, we're used to being penned despite the fact that there is often just as nice a wide world beyond those barricades as exists within them.
Thanks guys. I only wish I'd thought things through as much as you all seem to, when I was in my 20s. I was kind of all over the place. I'm not the only one I know in my age range who wonders if younger people who have been exposed to a lot more types of relationships and then selected one might actually end up sticking to it. In the early 90s you had monogamy or unattached sex, leaving out cheating which is treachery and not a relationship.
Even outside relationships, one can only hope many of you all will end up happier in midlife than we are. And I think we're happier than my father's generation was in mid life, you don't so often hear about midlife crises like you used to. But many of us have in various ways been left to wonder what happened, not just relationships but careers and everything, mainly I think because we just went along with things. Not deliberately, more by accident. I appreciate the fact you see people processing stuff a lot more, be it relationship types, whether or not to have kids, or careers or what have you. I know child-free people my age but not as many as those in their 20s who are intentional about not doing it. Not just to save the environment and not overpopulate, as important as that is, but because they know themselves, dare I say it, a hell of a lot better than most of us did in the 20s. I don't know if it's growing up through two wars and a recession that did it to at least some of you on the younger end, or what. But it's pretty radically obvious from the outside looking in. I don't know how people 40s and up miss this, and complain about nostalgic illusions instead.
I've never seen a case for monogamy before, ever. It just was. I'm impressed.
I’d like to talk about a few points here.
Open relationships are not necessarily polyamory.
Some open relationships are monogamous with the added piece that if you have a need for an experience I’m going to allow that experience and not leave you.
Now, how many experiences allowed depends on the people involved. I have talked some about swingers, so you have an idea what I mean.
I think this is the relationship Chelsea and I are talking about.
I personally am not a swinger, but refuse to get angry over the first experience, and I will allow that to go on for a time if my person is trying to decide about where she wants to be.
This is only if I have been in a monogamous relationship or what I call one on one relationship or married to the person. If we are single, not making a home and life together, it doesn’t matter to me at all as long as she remains safe and doesn’t keep adding people in the mix.
If we agree we are now one on one, sure I expect that, but she is not bound hand and foot. Come to me and we can work it out.
Now, I’d like to talk about selfishness. Chelsea and I are not saying you are selfish to want your partner to not sleep around at random and whenever she or he wants. We are saying it is selfish to demand a partner give up his or her sexual needs when you are unable to provide them.
The circumstances we are talking about are permanent sickness, long term disability, in were you might be down for several months, but get better. Maybe you are healthy in all other respects, just cannot provide sex for some reason. This is done with an agreement and you don’t need to feel ashamed or like you are cheating or being unfaithful.
If we accept our partners to stay with us under these scenarios, than we have to except they have needs and because we except this we feel it be selfish to say to them give up your needs because I can’t have sex, and stay with me.
On the cheating, no, I am not super human, and I have feelings. The thing is, I accept the fact people can and do change. I accept the fact she might see someone else she wants to experience sex with.
What creates the cheating is the lying, not the act itself.
If she comes to me and tells me she has an interest in someone else sexually and is going to pursue this interest, how has she cheated me? If she sneaks around and has her sexual experience and I learn about it she has lied, been dishonest.
You can not cheat a person that has accepted these things might happen you can only lie to me.
She doesn’t need to sneak, so there is no cheating. If she lies, I see this as the same as if she tells me she has done something, like paid a bill, or taken care of something and she has not. I don’t get emotional hurt and feel unloved, I think she’s a liar and I need to get away from her before she causes trouble I can’t fix.
Now, I also know people lie, so the extent of my anger depends on the damage the lie has caused.
Writer, you describe your monogamous relationship beautifully. The problem I see with this, and I’m not talking in your case, but generally, is when as you say the partner comes and states he has become interested in someone else he is not free to leave. He must lose to leave. He must pay alimony. He has to go through arguments, tears, hurt, and must suffer shame. He is told he has a problem, like sexual addiction and needs help because he obviously can’t hold down a monogamous relationship.
That is what we don’t want.
Freedom means you can change and your change will be understood and even for a while excepted, in that I’ll not leave you make you suffer for your feelings, make it hard on you.
If children are involved, sure they must be cared for, but it still shouldn’t be a major fight to go.
Love is understanding, and when I posted all my reasons why people that insist on monogamy have issues. They actually have an open relationship as I’m talking about, because they do it anyway. They just can’t admit it might happen, so lie, sneak, and cheat, causing hurt.
Yes, you say I was ready, and chose the right person. This works sometimes and people remain monogamous for life, but many times, and I think this is the majority it doesn’t.
If people were more open to human change I think relationships would be easier to manage.
Speaking of kids, I want to pose a question to those pro-open relationship types. How do you maintain a family in you roppinion--Kids, a stable home for them, etc. Without compartmentalizing them, or if you won't compartmentalize, then confusing them instead.
In my view, a kid is happiest in a stable home. This isn't to say that a kid is happiest with his two parents under one roof, as it's not always the case...But a child does thrive on stability...And I'll go as far as saying that if the parents do get along well, they are together and they provide a happy environment fo rhte child, he has a damn better chance at thriving that those who don't.
How then, do you explain that mom or dad won't be eating dinner with the rest of the family, because mom or dad is out on a date. Because mom or dad wants to be free.
Then, how do you explainsomething like: well, because mom likes mister mike almost as much as she loves dad, she'll be sleeping over at his house sometimes. Oh and, daddy can no longer partake in sexual activity with mommy, so that's why she's out for an hour or two...or a weekend. she needs to unwind.
Maybe I'm not explaining it correctly, but you catch my drift I'm sure. It seems that those who view open relationships as something more suitable for them personally, seem to also be the ones who don't really want kids, nor have them, or at least not while they live a life where the open relationship is part of their lifestyle.
I'm just genuinely curious how kids come into the equasion...When people may come and go, where spontaneous choices--no matter how well thought out--are made to satisfy one's personal convenience rather than to make stability a propriety for the family's sake.
Good post here.
I also think Luke should remain single and except what he is.
I hope I have explained the other side of the puzzle so to speak.
In my life it works, although I don't find many that agree with me.
It is also possible, and I have and do it, for people that think as I do to connect with people on the monogamy side.
I am careful to lay out my opinions and feelings up front, so if they feel they want to trust I'm not going to be "cheating" on them, we can go ahead.
I also don't expect them to understand or except my changes if they should happen. In these cases I must break up with them completely, not sway them to my side.
Sure, I’d like everyone to think as I do, and see it from my prospective, but it doesn’t happen.
I have dated 2 people at once, but it was not polyamorous, because I live alone and am totally single.
I have also been on the other side, in that I liked a woman and she dated me and another buy. She chose him, because they are more suited to each other.
I was also married for years and that relationship went through different fazes and that might be why my opinion has gotten stronger.
I’ve always believed in openness, and find it easier to live with. I don’t have the time, patients nor will to try to keep someone with me.
I am totally comfortable alone provided I can find intimate partners, or people to spend time with for dinner, an outing, so it isn’t all about the sex. Smile.
I am able to do a long distance relationship provided we meet soon. However, I couldn’t promise her 100% faithfulness, unless we visited often.
If we couldn’t visit often for some reason, we’d be intimate friends.
If I really loved her, we’d live together. I guess that is a male statement, but I feel when a man chooses his mate he should make arrangements.
I have always been a believer in openness, so my views are a mix of thinking and experiences.
I'll talk about the kids next. I understand what you mean. Smile.
Wayne, just want to interject something here.
First off, thanks for being another voice of reason and for a clarification. I see what you mean when you say that to deny a partner sexual freedom is selfish.
However, depending on the person, insisting upon your own sexual freedom is just as selfish because that person may want you to remain committed to only them.
I completely agree that people need to not bloody well lie to each other. Just come right out and say what you feel or what you're going through.
Bernadetta, I think polyamory and an open relationship are getting confused just a bit here. Polyamorous people may have a bit of a snag with kids, but then if the kids are raised around that sort of lifestyle and taught that it's okay, there should be no problem. As lLo and others hae stated, there's no inherent biological freakout that happens when situation A is not fulfilled in cases like this. I imagine there are poly individuals all over the place who have kids and prosper rather well.
As a sort of side-note, I don't wish to be cheated upon or lied to, and I don't wish my partner to go off and satisfy her sexual cravings elsewhere, but if for some reason that happened, it wouldn't necessarily bman a swift kick out the door. I'd weigh the slight against the depth of the relationship, bearing in mind the erosion of trust that might have resulted and the reason for it happening in the first place. Then, and only then, would my partner and I decide on a course of action.
Well Sheph, you can't expect your person to except it so I agree with your point. If it will hurt them your only option if you must have it is to leave them. Otherwise, if you say okay, you must stick to that agreement.
Depending on the age of the child makes the difference in what you do about it.
It also depends on the type of open relationship you have.
If a child is young and broth up in this type of house hold you need not explain anything. Even in monogamous relationships, dad or mom are not always around for dinner, so why should the reason for their absents be different if they are at work, at Judy’s or Bob’s house, or out playing bridge with the friends.
They are simply not home. They aren’t going to be absent every dinner.
Next, why do you need to explain to a young child that mom or dad is sleeping anyplace at all? Parents do work nights don’t they?
The only reason this becomes a big deal is because the adults make it so, a child grows up in the environment you set, and as long as that environment is loving, peaceful, and free of discourse the child won’t suffer nor worry about it at all.
Now in the case of an older child, some of the same principals apply only if the openness starts when they are older.
In the case of dinner mom or dad are simply not here today. Where they are is not a child’s business, and doesn’t need explaining does it? If they ask say so.
If a parent is missing overnight, say he or she is out visiting and leave it at that. If you aren’t angry, upset, and mad your child won’t perceive the visit as something bad now will they?
Now if it is likely the child might see dad or mom out because now they are upper teens, level. Again, if you aren’t upset that dad or mom has a girlfriend, the child won’t be either.
In these monogamous relationships the problem come in when it is sneaking and the adults are arguing, fighting about it or the child sees dad or mom with somebody when they said they were at work.
This is why you wonder what you do if you have children. Where there is peace children have no problems at all with your affairs.
No smoke, no fire so to speak.
Here's something I think people are missing just a bit. Yes, I suppose it is selfish to deny your partner sexual "freedom". But what if that partner is perfectly happy (happier, even) without that freedom? If Shepherdwolf turned to me tomorrow and said "Look, love, I realize that the distance is really hard on us both sometimes; I want you to have sexual freedom. If you need cuddles or sex or anything else physical I just can't give you, take it." I'd honestly be uncomfortable. I'd appreciate the gesture, I suppose, but I'd not seek out that freedom, because I don't want other people, I want him. I'm much happier waiting it out than I would be trying to negotiate the potentially muddy waters of sleeping with others or even having emotional attachments with others while my partner is unable to provide me what I need. (And I use the word need loosely here, as I certainly don't need sex and never have). What is freedom to one is just unnecessary discomfort for another, I think. My nature is truly monogamous, and no amount of "liberty" will change that.
Oh, wayne, I can't say I agree with your thought on what to do with the children in this case at all.
Ok, shepherdwolf, I have to concur that if the child is raised around polyamory, it's normal. then fine.
But this, what your speaking of wayne...It's not necessarily how I'd raise a child, so that's why I feel a bit biased against yoru explanation.
I am an advocate for honesty toward children. Sorry, but they're people too. And many of them are observant, and though maybe they won't put two and two together right away, they figure things out in the years to come--trust me. and shit about their parents comes back to haunt them. And confusion in later years ensues.
How do I know this? I was a kid with a parent who did the standard usual parent thing: covered things up with fibs and out-of-the way explanations--And I, being a very observant child would commit this to memory. and then later when I was older I'd wonder. You know what that does in the end? It breeches a child's trust toward his parent.
So if mom is away for the night and she's in fact not working, I'd hate to be the kid that's being lied to and said she is. That's totally disrespectful toward the child as a person--and I dont' know what your school of thought is on this, but I think kids deserve respect and openness too. Age-appropriate openness, but openness nonetheless.
So to hear that you'd be completely honest with your partner under any and all circumstances, but you wouldn't hesitate to lie to your kid, if only to simplify things--It honestly makes me wonder. Why is it ok to be dishonest toward anyone, even if they are yoru kid. Kids do remember--aAnd too many adults who become parents suddenly forget that that's the case.
Meglet, thank you honestly--I dont' know if I could have written what you did in your last post any better. You read my mind entirely.
Wayne, I don't know if you read about my experience with an open relationship, but in my post about it, I emphasized just that. I wouldn't feel comfortable with this supposed sexual freedom you hold in high esteem and deem so unselfish. I wouldn't find it endearing or selfless if my partner decided to encourage me to pursue other sexual relationships because he was away--Think of it like this: If you were diabetic and I said to you, wayne, you're such a great guy, here's ten friggin pounds of chocolate. Would you consider it a gift or...maybe not so much? I, being a lover of chocolate would surely think it was a fine gift. But for you, a hypothetical diabetic, this chocolate gift could kill.
So then, would my gift to you be a selfish representation fo what I'd like, or a true gift with consideration for your needs and what would be deemed acceptable to someone in your situation.I think it would be a selfish gift, no matter how heartfelt. Because I'd be considering what I'd have wanted as a gift, not giving much thought to whether this would be good for you.
See how this freedom you speak of can be potentially perceived as more selfish than our need for monogamy?
It's whatever makes a person feel most comfortable that is most appropriate.
Also, here's something else. I, like shepherd wolf wouldnt' automatically kick my significant other to the curb with a badge that said "cheater" on his forhead if he happened to have a lapse in judgement and broke our agreement of monogamy. I'd listen to his take on it, I'd examine the circumstances under which this took place, and if he still wanted to uphold our agreement and continue our relationship, I'd sincerely try to get past that. I'd forgive and discuss and learn to trust again--providing he didnt' make this into a habit or a reoccurance.
I wouldn't be willing to through away years of history, love and family for a transgression. Not right away at least.I'd try to make it work. But if he decided that he wanted a more open lifestyle, I'd have to leave. Because though I would be willing ot forgive a transgression--we're all human--and be understanding and encourage honesty as you should with someone you love, I wouldn't be ok with giving him a license to sleep with other people.
My man knows he doesn't need to sneak around--He knows that because I love him, despite being hurt, I'll try to understand and improve on my part--and that I wouldn't judge--providedthat he's sincere in trying to make our agreement of monogamy work once more.
That doesn't mean I need to let goe of my standards or preferences.
And as for being ill for a few months and not being able to have sex, I don't believe that if you really feel your partner is worth it, you couldn't wait for them to be able to have sex again.
Going back to the selfish thing: When a person is ill or going through a tough time, this serves as a chance for many couples to become closer. Yes, it's tough to watch someone who is ill, to care for them, etc. But it can also be beautiful, in that there is a certain vulnerability about the situation that allows the couple to experience a greater depth.
When a monogamous relationship is carefully cultivated and maintained, and it's monogamous for a reason, the couple will use the time to reconnect--and this often goes way beyond sex. This can be a tiem for them to focus on that deeper connection, thus sex is temporarily irrelevant.
If the able partner goes and seeks out other sexual interests with third parties, that could certainly disturb that closeness in my opinion.
Speaking personally, I'd rather spend that time getting to know my partner even better--there's always something new to learn if you keep things interesting, if both people are on an intellectual level. I'd rather lay down next to him and cuddle and talk than seek out that raw sexual experience with someone that doesn't mean nearly as much as my partner.
When I was pregnant, I had really horrible nausea. and then for a while, I was put on bed rest because of preeclampsia. Needless to say, I had to give up sex for a few months. How do you think I would have felt if my partner was getting it on with someone who could show him a good time, while I waited to give birth to his child? I'm not ashamed to say that I'd have been very hurt. And there's nothing wrong with that. He knew I'd have been pissed if he pursued other sexual relationships, and furthermore, I did what I could to help him with his sexual desires--provided they didnt' interfere with my medical circumstances. But tha'st not the point. We weren't able to have sex, but we were brought closer together with the mutual experience of getting ready to become first-time parents. He helped me by supporting me through my pregnancy, and I helped him by spending tiem with him, making him laugh--and yes, keeping the sexual tension alive, despite the fact that intercourse was prohibited. And you know what? He thinks the few months of sacrifice was worth it...He told me so himself--and that coming from a man who has quite the sex drive. lol
Meglet, I understand what you are saying and Writer on her point.
But here is the thing, with the freedom comes a choice. You never saw me write anyplace where my lover would be forced to do anything at all. This is exactly my point in giving her freedom.
If I were unable to provide her sex and she chose not to get it provided, that be just fine. I’d not be trying to convince her she needed anything at all, and would simply enjoy her company as she gave it to me.
So no I’d not offer a diabetic a box of chocolates. I’d know they were diabetic wouldn’t I?
This isn’t anything offered, it is discussed before hand just like my religious beliefs, my taste in music, my hopes and dreams. It isn’t something you offer as a sacrifice, it is just there.
Now if while discussing it we didn’t agree and she wanted me never to get my needs met, provided we ever got to that point, we’d not be able to conduct a full relationship. It be like me hooking up with a person that has to drink every day and stay drunk, we’d not be happy with each other, so we’d not be able to cohabitate.
On the children, I don’t exactly understand how you perceived I advocated lying to a child.
I stated if a child grew up in this environment it be normal. Why provide an answer to a question that has not been asked?
I also stated when the child was of age to ask that you should level with them, did I not?
I think where you thought I was saying that it wasn’t a child’s business were dad or mom was as lying or covering up, but what I meant by that was there is no reason to explain anything that is not ask of you to explain.
When a child gets old enough to understand your explanation you will level and say dad or mom is visiting their friend.
Okay you still haven’t explain what kind of friend, but you also don’t need to. The only reason you’d need to explain the type of friend would be because you wanted to get an opinion. If dad or mom were visiting a non intimate friend you’d just say they are visiting a friend, so why do you need to make the distinction?
Now when the child was old enough were they might see dad or mom out with the intimate friend you will level more and say we live an open relationship. By this time it still won’t matter, because you are not upset by it.
When the partner comes home you treat them as you would if they didn’t have another lover, so there is no difficulty at all.
Have I missed something?
Now in the case of pregnancy you were not going to be unable to give him sex ever, just for a time.
The next thing was you both were working on something together, and you were actually providing him some release. He had a person to be close to, you were not in a hospital bed connected to tubes and lines. You were not sick where you didn’t want to be close to him. You were not on the other side of the world for 6 8 months where he couldn’t touch you every night.
You even provided sex, so he never was missing it. Maybe it wasn’t intercourse, but intercourse is not all that makes up sex is it?
You were there, providing him his good time, and his close person.
Next, you say you’d forgive your mate, but in the relationship I’m talking about there is no need for it. You agree to let them experience it with out saying when you come back we can continue working on our monogamous relationship, because you see they never left nor stopped loving you or wanting you. They are just experiencing someone else.
It is possible to love more than one person and love them both deeply, or to love on person deeply, but enjoy temporary pleasure or something different with another.
When I was dating 2 different women I was ask was sex better with her? My answer was no, it was just different. It wasn’t better or worse.
I like ice cream, I really do. I’m also a fish lover. I love a good fresh fish and chips and sometimes on Friday’s I go get one. I don’t stop liking ice cream at all.
Yes, I know, sad comparison, but you get my meaning.
I’ll restate, I am not here to change minds nor convince, just explain the other side.
in an earlier post, a few of you talked about "denying one's nature," and I'm puzzled as to why that was even mentioned. if it's cause people are under the impression that those in open relationships truly couldn't be with one person at a time, I hope you all learn something from what's being said, here.
also, I think some of you are getting polyamorous relationships confused with open relationships. they aren't one in the same, necessarily.
polyamerous can mean that you're with multiple people, in a familial type arrangement. whereas, an open relationship signifies that there's a possibility of being with other people, but not necessarily in that type of an arrangement.
the latter is what Wayne and I are talking about. so, given that fact, the question posed about how we'd talk to our kids about it, doesn't really apply. still, I'll answer it.
if children are raised in an environment where there are more than two partners, say, and they're able to see that everyone loves each other, is happy, and wants nothing but the best for one another, things will be fine. however, if children grow up in an unstable, unloving environment, as was true for some of us, they'll likely have a harder time in life, at least till they're able to get good guidance (assuming they're willing to take it) or till the point where they're willing to put in the effort to figure out who they've been, who they are, and who they wanna be.
whether people are in polyamorous relationships, open relationships, monogamous relationships, homosexual relationships, or heterosexual one's, has nothing to do with it.
when it's said that monogamy is only lost on those who don't communicate well, who aren't cut out for it, or who don't give and take, a very ignorant assumption is being made, which is that people in open relationships are selfish.
it's obvious to me that people who make such statements haven't seen success stories, where they're concerned. if they had, they'd at least see the fact that they're no less giving, or if they are, it's those particular people that make them so, not the fact it's an open relationship.
Bernadetta, I obviously don't agree with what you've said, but I feel you're sorely mistaken on something major.
although you, personally, would be hurt knowing your partner was sleeping with someone else, not everyone feels the same way you do. in fact, Wayne and I've both tried to explain that point, in this very discussion.
speaking for myself, I don't get hurt, in having the knowledge that whoever I'm with is enjoying sex with others. quite the contrary, actually.
I'm much happier knowing we both have the freedom to be who we are, say how we feel, and get our needs met with others, if we choose to. so, this perception that it's all about sex for people who think like Wayne and I, is totally misguided.
since I'm honest, choose my partners only when I know them well and like what I see, knowing they ricipracate, that, in turn, frees me from the hurt most people typically feel.
also, Bernadetta, you say you've been in an open relationship before, but you don't have a good attitude about it. you say you feel it doesn't work for you, which isn't what I take issue with.
I take issue with the fact that you seem to be completely miserable about having had the experience, yet, surprised by the fact you hated it as much as you did, when you clearly stated that you weren't truly for it happening, in the first place.
I think what it ultimately comes down to, though, is jealousy. people can't bare the thought of their partner being with someone else. therefore, it's easy for them to find comfort in the fact that they've made these promises, said these things, made these plans, ETC.
what Wayne and I are saying, is not the same thing. we're saying that those promises, those plans, those things that many human beings want said, in order to feel a sense of security and comfort in their relationships, don't need to be said or done in the relationships we're in. we're saying that we're happy with the time we spend with people, period, and that we feel like no less of a human being if they, or we, choose to spend time with others.
before anyone jumps on me unnecessarily, I wasn't talking about people's specific situations that they've discussed, here. I was speaking generally, as to how I see things.
I was also explaining in an effort to show you my viewpoint, not to change minds. I guess what it all boils down to is personal preference and the nature of the human you're dealing with. I still would content that being on the other side of the world wouldn't warrant the need for a new or other sexual partner, but that's me. and you'd say differently, because that's your nature. And I guess we all agree that there's no one way of it. I'll be happy in my way of conducting relationships as long as no one with other views tries to interfere in it directly. I can listen to other views, appreciate them as curius knowledge, just as I would if I were studying religion. I am an atheist, but from a historical and cultural standpoint, I'll gladly pick up a book on religious views. So as long as no one is saying they'd directly and deliberately try to change the minds of others, I think we can all agree to disagree with a little bit more understand of the opposing or just different viewpoints. And that's great.
On the "What about the children argument," my Lesbian friend and her wife hear this all the time. Truth is, it's us adults that have the hangups or challenges, not kids.
My daughter for instance has no issue with the fact Dad can't drive or any of those things. I didn't sit down and explain to her about being blind, but I did take guff from some "what-about-the-children" types, who went so far as to say she could suffer because I could not make eye contact, something a sighted child needs. I know we're deciding sex isn't a need, and so it would go eye contact isn't a need, emotional support isn't even a need, because we can all live without them.
But I suggest again, there is a alt.polyamory newsgroup who has a web page with frequently asked questions, and the Sexual Futurist blog and Youtube display quite a bit.
What about the children of the blind? They grow up just fine, beg for food, get embarrassed as teenagers about people staring, come home after they have moved out, and otherwise enjoy full well-adjusted lives. So it is with the children of the gay people I know also. The one difference with the polyamorous that I have read about is that childcare is shared by multiple parties. It's not just the sex. I know, people oversexualized the gays, the blacks, and now the polys, while at the same time saying sex was not everything. This is just another case of the same. But the one difference I did observe with the poly crowd from what I read was, shared responsibilities among more than just two. This isn't done just with poly people, by the way, but it's done with people who live in extended family communities, something outside the Western capitalist monolith most of us myself included have just taken for granted, and used to our own advantage without even thinking about it.
The challenges come not from the home but from the outside. It's a bit of a logical fallacy for society to tell my gay friend that her relationship is bad for the kids and at the same time that kid sees signs like God hates fags. I'm not saying anyone on here is doing that to the polys, but just pointing out the "what about the children" argument is mainly about us and our perceptions, mine and anyone else's. Bernadetta actually has experience with some of this, while as I said, a year ago I was really surprised to learn these people existed in numbers. And yeah I got called old by the niece, but had the good grace to laugh it off.
Ironically the what about the children argument I have herd from extended situations from other countries, where kids are raised more communally, because they can't imagine just one single monolith of two parents, or one, doing all the childcare, without daily input from others' involvement. In part, those communities, and the polyamorous ones also, probably have a point. What stay-at-home mother or stay-at-home dad has not been driven to near insanity?
In some ways going online now helps.
But human children have been raised in community for most of human history, and certainly human prehistory. Our two-parent nuclear model is mainly a product of the Industrial revolution, and it certainly serves to benefit the system we have now.
As an aside, my grandmother got her bee in a bonnet over seeing my parents express any sort of physical or sexual affection in front of us, because of the very same "what about the children" argument. Very accustomed as she was to a post-Victorian lifestyle, and apparently wholly ignorant of the fact most human children have seen a lot more than our rather sterile environments expose them to now.
Perhaps the question would be, regarding polys, or gays, or monolithic capitalistic nuclear types like most of us: "Are we providing the children a decent and stable environment?"
Certainly there is a richness that cannot be denied in a communal environment provided by the geometry of poly households or extended communities.
And there is an ambition and industrious nature that cannot be denied which comes from those of us in the two-paren't nuclear industrial system, raising them up and into the mainstream. Both value systems produce different human results, surely, and probably both results are necessary.
If people knowingly select one or the other, it just means they know themselves well enough to have picked.
But this is my answer to the "What about the children," argument.
As to giving something up we don't really feel is a need, that is not really a sacrifice. It is no sacrifice if the Wife said she could not stay with me if I ever went to a slot machine, because to me I could give or take that. I could even wax pretty philosophical about some things that I really like but for me personally I don't consider needs. She's in a situation where hearing about my day would actually be difficult. Does that make me some sacrificing human being? Not really, because it's not that important to me. Either it is a need, and is that important and so is a real sacrifice, or it isn't. I can't have it both ways. Since I can live comfortably without doing that, except on rare occasions, I am totally fine. Even more fine because I understand her situation and how hard it is where she does work. At least I can try to understand. Her line of work is emotionally very taxing in ways I actually think I can't really appreciate. In fact, as someone who doesn't have a high emotion drive right now, I can even say like the long distance people that if she can hear me out on something very difficult it can be beautiful. I could even get poetic and say it's better because of the infrequency. But in critical analysis it's true it's beautiful but I also don't have that kind of a drive or need. Now higher sex needs are vilified while higher emotional needs are held up as model examples for the rest of us to become more sensitive human beings.
We just happen to put a cultural premium on giving up sex. Me personally, I can't really have it both ways, claiming something isn't a need, then saying I'm unselfish or sacrificing to give it up. This is not me being mean-spirited, it is just me being totally intellectually honest.
Some older person may try and say, for instance that I am being such a nice guy because I make her food in the evenings. Since that older person only wished her husband might have ever done something like that. Except in the spirit of tru honesty, I work from home and she has a physical and emotional job, and I really enjoy making her food. Not because it was trendy for guys to cook or anything, I would probably be very unhappy to forego doing physical things that make her happy or comfortable.
In an emotional sense, it's a need, a bit therapeutic if you will, knowing I can contribute to her well-being after the day she's had. In all honesty, none of this is high-minded virtuous. In fact, being brutally honest, I'm getting my own need met, my need to see she is getting what she needs. To me, since we have been together, that has always been a need of mine. Some have other words for it, but fortunately for me there's no shame attached or using the word drive like we do sex drive. I sorely missed doing things for her when I was gone on business trips. It would go the same, even if not culturally very popular, for someone who didn't really see sex as a need. I understand this violates a ton of cultural constraints since we put a premium on the virtues of sexual denial. We also put a cultural premium on emotional fulfillment. So it's not so cut and dry as we seem to think.
And for some people, have a high emotions drive if you will, though I am not emotions shaming here, needing to let it out or "dump" is in fact a need. I've seen them go without, and as someone who needs less in that department it is more obvious to me than even to them sometimes, what a need it actually is for them. Only there is no cultural premium set on their denial in this context.
For the sole reason that I put a premium on her happiness, I would never seek anything sexual elsewhere, and I have never even given it careful consideration.
I'll go so far as to say her happiness or well-being is a need of mine. A need for which I have a really high drive, actually, to use the term coined at sex. Only I will never be shamed for it, or told I am an addict, or had any other pseudoscientific terms thrown at me for it, because it's not something that violates any of our taboos. I'm not self-sacrificing to do it. I would be if I had to go without sex, though. And I would be if I had to go without doing things for her. Only one of those things would get me called lazy or insensitive, and the other would have me hailed as a self-sacrificing creature, while elimination of both are unfulfilled needs, yes I will admit it both are about equal when it comes to needs.
I wonder how much these constrictions plague nontraditional relationships like gays. I'm wondering if all this discussion of sacrifice and not being a need is rather heteronormative. But then again, I've never been anything but heterosexual. Would be interesting if a gay member of this site weighed in on this.
Leo, that last post actually makes a ton of sense. Though I didn't express it in the same way as you did, I was sort of going along the same point. So I guess we monogamous people by nature have a need to satisfy one other person besides ourseves--One other person at a time. Because, as someone who is also not ashamed of my needs, I'll say that sex is very high on my list of priorities--as someone with a high sex drive. But I am driven not just by sex in general, but by sex with the person who is in the relationship with me. So yes--it's a sexual need, but it's not sex in general, but with some exclusivity attached to it.
I can also personally say that I become very temperamental and sometimes moody if I don't or can't experience general physical affection from my partner. I'm not really a hugger by default, but sometimes there are days when I seriously need a hug from my partner, for instance. somehow, that physical contact makes a ton of things that seem dismal at the moment, a whole lot better. There's actually a scientific explanation for the need of physical and emotional affection. When you engage in mutual physical affection with a romantic or sexual partner, you release the hormones oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine can be assimulated with being high on chemical drugs, such as cocaine . This hormone is often the one which is most prominent for the feelings that are associated with being in love. Serotinin is what is released during excersise--It's the feel-good adrenaline that pumps through you after a good and satisfactory work out. And oxytocin is the main hormone responsible for the feelings experienced when physical comfort is given. It's like a mood stabilizer. When someone you love gives you a hug, dont' you feel so much better, at least for the moment?
Yeah. So in that sense, there's physical and scientific explanation, for the need to experience physical affection.
An interesting tidbit: Women also experience the release of at least a small amount of oxytocin when engaging in sexual activity with a partner, while men mostly experience adrenaline and testosterone release. While this may be slightly different for everyone, it's still a scientific fact in the case of a great majority of humans. So with that said, scientists have actually determined that whether they like it or not, women become at least slightly more attached to their one-night-stands than men do. So a man who is a textbook example of this chemical phenomenon will treat a one-night-stand as a great lay. While a woman may, and I repeat, may, feel a little more mixed about it. Then enter the feelings of: well, I dont' know him that well, why did I fall into bed with him so quick, will I see him again? Do I want to see him again? I sort of do, but I sort of don't, and so on.
Now, again, I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, but it may explain why women more often equate sex with love than men do. Men can separate sex from actually being in love, while many women have trouble with the distinction--Me included. lol.
And as for the kids, leo, I want' talking about the children of polyamory. No. Shepherdwolf was right--there's a difference in having an open relationship and actually engaging in a polyamorous relationship. An open relationship consists of a couple with occasional or even regular but not main partners who are outside of the relationship. they're not shared. Where as in actual polyamory, more than two people experience a relationship together, and a family in most cases. They may actually engage romantically or sexually with one another, regardless of the gender, whereas in an open relationship, each partner may have separate other partners.
Now, this isn't the norm of course, for our sister wives cases. That is paligomy, directed by religious beliefs and adhering to double standards.
My point in asking about the children was not what they'd think of the parents who raised them. I'm sure kids can adopt to a communal childcare system. I was more concerned about a certain lack of stability in a tre open relationship, where mom and dad's partners may come and go, or stay or what have you. Though I'm sure people deal with this effectively enough, I wouldnt' personally feel that that's healthy for a child to grow up in. Not because there are multiple people involved in the adult relationship, but that some people may come and go...f course, you can, and probably do choose not to introduce your kids to yoru extracurricular partners--almost as you do when dating as a single parent. So maybe that's not as much of an issue as I think it myight be. But as we know, being a monogamous person by nature I have a hard time seeing some aspects of the other side, even if I could appreciate and acknowledge that it does work for some people.
There is surely a lot I don't know. You clarified more on the difference between the open relationship and the polyamorous kind. I guess growing up with the majority, and in my case anyway, taking it for granted, I've realized how much I don't know. Sort of like when I went to Japan. I don't practice everything I learned over there, but certainly that exposure broadened me considerably. At least I would like to think so.
Thanks for the clarifications. And I had only heard minimal amounts of the science of the chemicals, so your explanations in that department also make a lot of sense.
leo, I can totally relate to what you're saying about the emotional aspect of things. I'm not emotionally driven myself, as in, I rarely need to rant to people about my days, no matter what the circumstances are. however, like you, I'll certainly be the listener for others, if they want or need me to be.
Bernadetta, you're still missing something, though, about people in open relationships. we don't put ourselves first, any less than you do. in fact, I've said in much earlier posts that my main concern is keeping my partner happy.
so, if that means we stay faithful just to each other, that's what will be carried out. if that means that we agree to see other people while the other is away, or unable to perform, for any reason, that's what we'll do.
and, this is the very reason why I say I don't feel that people who share my views, are selfish. cause, in all my relationships, it has always been, and always will be, about my partner or partners, first and foremost. I'm sure Wayne would agree.
as for your curiosity regarding the children aspect of it, Bernadetta, I'm sure that, even as a strictly monogamous woman, hypathetically speaking, you wouldn't randomly tell your son, when he's a small child, about various boyfriends you may have coming and going from your house, would you?
honestly, I'm not sure why you might think that would be different for people who may have multiple partners (maybe others have that misconception, too, though).
I really enjoyed reading your last post Bernadetta.
I also believe when you add sex to the mix women become more attached than men.
Many women I have known associate a good sexual relationship with love, or think it means you are in love with them.
Nothing wrong with this, but it is something people like me must talk about and make sure we understand.
Some spent time with a woman I like can really set my week up, but it doesn't have to be love.
Good close friendship, and like, but love for me takes a long time to develop.
I care about people, and if I'm intimate with them this is more so, but love is different.
Like Chelsea, my lover or lovers are important, they just don't have to belong to me.
Strange I know
If I had to have a sexless relationship for any reason, orwas ask the question, "What would you need to replace sex?"
I'd have to say a person that caredabout my wellbing, was there to talk to me, sit with me just to sit, hold me sometimes, and be a good friend.
If I had that, she could go get her sex someplace else and I'd truly smile to know she's being pleasured. It is just how I'm built.
I wonder if any of this will change, regarding women's connection between sex and love, since beforehand sex meant pregnancy, which meant childbirth and all the complications or death, and the need for the male parent to at least behave as though he was attached in this way. Now with women controlling their own fertility, this all may eventually change. Birth control pills have only been available in the U.S. since 1973 or so, and so it is with abortions. Only recently in 1994 or so did we start hearing about the Morning After Pill, and now there is talk of one which is a just-in-case-it-happens type situation.
The hardware is slower to catch up than the software though, and I just wonder how these things will change. It used to be said men are uncomfortable in an environment where women out-earn them. This current economic crisis showed that in fact men are reasonably okay with this situation. Women however had a harder time with him not earning enough, and her now having to be gone, the very same thing she used to resent him for. I saw an interview in 2008 where a woman said she used to think the term Mr. Mom was cute, but now she absolutely hates it, and resents him staying at home while she has to go out and work.
I think all of this must be connected somehow. Not in every case, surely, but in general terms.
The women equating sex to love exclusively, and men having this separation, goes right along with the biological factors where her aim is to secure the most stable partner, (often still means the one with the best means or most potential for means), while his biological aim is to spread his seed as far as possible and hope for the best. Excepting the monogamy to stem infanticide argument.
This is not to say all are like this, but certainly the women equating sex to love goes along with a far more traditional perspective most of us would dare voice.
For the one who physically carries the offspring, at least now until we use artificial wombs, this biological strategy makes the most sense. It would also make a lot of sense that people in open or poly relationships may be more likely child-free, though the poly relationships represent something akin to the bonobonos who reproduce just fine.
Again, not criticizing or sayig any one person is one way, just attempting to understand the strategies at play. I mean, who would have thought this poly and open business would have even surfaced, in the context of a capitalist, resource-ownership-based structure? Typically we find these fit and operational in the most primitive societies - pre-agricultural hunter gatherers. In those cases one is less vulnerable with more close alliances, and so I wonder if women in those societies release different hormone combinations to match what is likely to invoke trust from a multi-partner situation.
I should add before some think I'm defending one way against another, that guys like me got eaten in more primitive times, and only in a postmodern industrialized society do men like me have the luxury of not only survival but being ourselves being the so-called sensitive types in relationships. Even fifty years ago not only men but women would have scorned us.
I am only lucky to be alive during the times we live in now, where I can be free to support her interests, do domestic things, and not because some think it's popular or 90s trendy, but because I just function that way. Similar to how Bernadetta spoke of her relationship.
Well, leo, I speak for myself here, but I for one am quite happy with being the breadwinner of my little family. My partner hangs out with the little one while I work, and I find that incredibly endearing on his part, and I feel we both contribute equally, just in different ways.
Well, Chelsea, I actually wouldnt' be bringing various boyfriends around to the house, and it's not because I'm a prude or that I think I'll never have the opportunity to do so again given that I'm in a relationship with his father. No matter what ends up happening, I won't be bringing various boyfriends around the house because I know firsthand what that does to a kid. I was raised by a single mom who naturally did date. And she'd introduce me to her boyfriends, which wasn't good for me--not because I didnt' like them or they weren't nice, but it would suck me out of my realm of stability and throw me off-balance, even in a minor way. So no, I catually wouldnt' do that to my kid, no matter the circumstances. Thats' something I'd decided on indefinitely, so I still fail to see the good in what your talking about in that aspect.
And, not to bring this up again--But I can't help commenting on something you said regarding selfishness in your last post. You say you'd do anything for your partner, and your partner's needs come first. So what if you entered this open relationship, stayed monogamous for a few years without incident because you both saw this as a comfortable way to be...Then he got used ot it, but you found a reason you deemed worthy to seek sexual gratification elsewhere. Please dont' tell me you'd be doing your partner any favor in that instance, by going through with the open aspect of the relationship if by that point, he'd still rather keep it so that you're both faithful to each other. You'd go ahead with it, regardless of whether he liked it or not: You'd break up with him if he absolutely didnt' want it to happen...How's that not looking after your needs first? lol. Just pointing a little contradiction out.
Bernadetta, I was speaking hypathetically, in my last post, when I posed the question to you.
like you, I grew up around a woman who brought her boyfriends around all the time. also like you, I had a similar reaction to it.
that fact alone, is why I feel that, if I'm ever with someone who I mutually wanna have kids with, I'm gonna ensure that my kids are in a stable environment.
this means that I wouldn't be bringing people around the house, as I'll never put any child through what instability I went through.
also, Bernadetta, I don't get the contradiction you're trying to point out.
I've never denyed that wanting to get sex elsewhere isn't thinking about myself.
as you should understand by now, though, there are no double standards. what I would do myself, I would allow the person I'm with the same freedom.
yes, I said I put my partner first, which is true. however, I also said that of course there will undoubtedly be times where I think about my needs, as well.
that's something everyone should do, as we need to take care of ourselves, in order to better care for those we love.
that's why, as you said, I'd leave whoever I was with, if, down the road, we both came to want different things. and, of course, whoever I'm with would have that same freedom to leave me, if things changed for them.
that's the whole point Wayne and I have been trying to make throughout this discussion.
people do change, and will change. that's how humanity works. the more open we are to willingly embrace those changes, the better.
Here's what I don't understand. where does anyone get off claiming either monogamy or open relationships are more selfish than the other? Monogamists, I suppose, are selfish in that they want their love and intimacy to be exclusive, but they also grant that exclusivity to their partners. People in open relationships are selfish (if you want to call it that, selfish doesn't have to be negative) because they insist on not being locked in as it were, but also are perfectly happy to let their partners have the same liberty. Why compare selfishness? Neither is any more selfish than is healthy, in my opinion. There is no superiority or inferiority here from what I can see, only what works for whom.
Leo, I want to add to your post about sacrifices and how if you give up something you'd be okay with going without anyway, it's not a true sacrifice. That's *exactly* why monogamy is okay by me. No, monogamy is not some great act of martyrdom, selflessness, or sacrifice. It's what's comfortable and preferred by those who practice it. I'm not special just because I deny myself sex with others, I'm doing what I've agreed to do, and want to do. It's no huge sacrifice (though at times I suppose it can get lonely, especially if you're in a long distance relationship like mine) but it's never been anything less than totally worth it. Each time I see my partner, I know instantly just why I'm doing what I'm doing, and it feels right to me, just as it does for him. By contrast, those in open relationships are not making some huge wonderful sacrifice by letting their partners have sexual freedom. They are abiding by an agreement, they are giving their partner what they themselves expect to receive in return. Nothing really sacrificial about that, when you genuinely don't feel hurt when your partner sleeps with someone else. I hope that nobody on this board has thought that we're trying to say that monogamy is somehow honourable.
Chelsae, I'll answer you the best I can. I think we automatically see yung people as vibrant and old people as washed up. That's why people cringe at old people have sex. I know it happens, it is a fact, but I personally find it nasty.
Meglet, I the selfish part is not monogamy itself, it is insisting your partner not fulfill his or her sexual needs when you can not provide them.
We are not talking for a short time, but in the case when you have become unable either because of sickness, mental inability, or for lengthy periods of separation, more than a few months.
It is only selfish if your partner ask and you refuse not if you both agree. If you both agree you have not withheld anything from them.
This question came up on another board. It went something like if you were sick or unable to provide sexual needs for your spouse would you allow them to seek it elsewhere. Many said no, they wanted the partner to give up sex even if this meant for the rest of their lives, because they would feel unloved and that the partner was unfaithful to the union.
That is not the exact wording, but the gist.
I am interested in what way the poster sees sex between old persons nasty? What make it so?
Wow, over 160 posts, and I finally got through it. I've seen this board topic, but never clicked it, as I didn't recognize what it was. The only reason I looked at it was because someone mentioned it to me and wondered what my input would be.
I'm only going to relay my own tiny bit of experience here. I've read all this stuff, and like so many others, I don't think there's a right or wrong. If it works for the people involved, then it's good, no matter the agreement. I've always said that I wanted to be in a relationship with a couple, where all three of us would be great friends and we'd all be completely honest and have good communication. It will probably be nothing more than a fantasy for me. I sort of had the opportunity to give it a spin. A girl and I both liked the same guy. We both gave him plenty of phone sex, both separately and together. I agreed that this was the way I wanted it. Eventually, my emmotions got in the way though, and I had to step back and take a good long look at what I was doing. I had no one to blame but myself, since I did agree to it. Basically, I saw that he really cared more about her than me. This is not what I had the problem with. I expected it to happen that way. What upset me was that I saw that she didn't care about him. She would be so busy with her other cyber lovers that she wouldn't have time for him if he was upset about something and needed to talk. I hated how he was being treated, so I wanted to protect him. However, he had plenty of warning signs and he chose to put the blinders on. I had to finally realize that this was not the situation that would leave me fealing happy and fulfilled. I'm not even saying that I couldn't be happy in a 3 person relationship, but the one with those two people wasn't going to work. I only mention this because, as already stated in earlier posts, people can agree to something, not fully realizing what they're up against.
I also agree that there's a huge difference between love and pure lust. Everyone on here probably knows by now that I absolutely love to hear a guy getting off, whether it's by himself or with someone else. Some guys sound hotter than others. I've had phone sex and real sex with both people I felt strongly attached to, and with total strangers, especially phone with the strangers. Both are satisfying, on some level, but sharing those intimate moments with someone I have really deep feelings for leaves me feeling a lot more fulfilled and happy. I think that the reason why the 3 person relationship seems to draw me is that, for whatever reason, I'm attracted to the straightish sort of guys. If a guy is too fem and is too gay, it totally turns me off. So especially on something like the zone, where I'm more open, I can see how my completely open flirting could turn other guys off as well and I accept that. We can't help what turns us on or off. By saying that I'm more open here than I am in other places, I'm not trying to say that I'm necessarily different here. It's just that on this text chat site, I can actually interact, where as in public situations, I really can't anymore. My hearing just doesn't allow me to absorb the convo and participate on the same level as I can here on the zone. If I'm in a situation where I know all the people in the room and am comfortable, I'll make more sexual jokes and just basically be myself. I'm quiet and shy until I know enough of the people around me. I'm not comfortable walking in to a place and jumping straight in to the action without first sort of feeling out the atmosphere. But, to try to get this back on topic, I don't think I would mind sharing my partner with someone else, as long as I knew that the other person really did care about my partner and weren't just using him. Whether I'd ever be able to be convince that my partner wasn't being used, is a point that I honestly don't know about. This is why I really don't know where I stand on this stuff. For myself, though, if I'm really in love, I just can't imagine even wanting to experience anything sexual with anyone else. I've gone through that several times. eventually it wears off, especially when I've fallen in love with someone I can't have. Hell, maybe it's just lust. I don't know. all I can say is that when I do get attached, it takes a while before I can see someone else in a sexual light.
Bernadetta said something in an earlier post that I forgot to comment on, which is that we'll hopefully be able to understand each other on both sides. however, there's no misunderstanding on mine or Wayne's side, so I'm not sure where that came from.
Meglet, Wayne said exactly what I was going to. monogamy isn't what's selfish. however, insisting that your partner go without something, when you can't provide it, is selfish.
margorp, I still don't understand your logic.
Chelsea,
Isn't this typical of fringie minorities, though? Supermajorities are endlessly guilty of either vilifying, romanticizing, or otherwise othering minority groups. Look at the way people look at us blind people: either super human or resource drains or helpless or yes, even selfish, for requesting access to things.
I'm admittedly guilty: I said earlier that a year ago I heard about these types of relationships and thought, "My god these people are from Mars or something."
I was raised with the typical understanding of monogamy being an ownership-based system that gives advantage to females of the species at least now. Used to be males, but with modern social constructs and family courts, monogamy's advantages are exclusively hers. Also implied, though never talked about in polite society was the notion of the woman's emotional stability, which has been borne out in such graphic detail on here by the confessions of many I can do no less than admire their courage.
Sure, I knew of polyamorous cultures though I didn't know the word, and typically these are hunter-gatherer societies. But I never even imagined the possibility of such in a post-industrial, capital-based economy.
But just like gay marriage serves as a phantom threat to the supermajority of heterosexual marriages, so polyamory and open relationships serve as a somewhat less phantom threat to the monogamist supermajority.
Because, what makes us uncomfortable is not any particular moral argument, but this so-called unselfishness or sacrifice. Consider what we monogamists do: we refrain from outside encounters. The key word is refrain. What other sacrifices are exclusively about refrain? The rescue worker who sacrifices to save a life returns with a life saved.
Imagine if I told you I went to work so that I could say to my partner that I was not on vacation. That sounds silly, but that is what we monogamists do: I won't partake of any extracurriculars, so that I can continue to say to my partner, myself, the club and all other cool members of us the supermajority that I did not do that. Most of us aren't going to pare it down to this, we come up with moral, emotional, economic and other reasons for maintaining our status in the supermajority. And although supermajority it is, what we do is actually really tenuous, and most relationships have some forms of checking up on, or rules about what can be seen as extracurricular.
The lengths to which we go to on this stuff would tell you it is about ownership and control, whether we like it or not, and a really tenuous version of it at that. Imagine being tallied by your employer for what you did not, rather than for what you did. Since you're being tallied for what you did not, then there will always be tension. How exactly do you prove the lack of something? Fidelity is a lifelong demonstration of just that.
Not saying it's right or wrong, and I don't want to fall into the ethnotourist trap of romanticizing your way of doing things. That model has its problems like anyone else's. But it competes with a very tenuous, and extremely unstable majority.
So while all minority groups, including blind people, atheists, gays, transgendered and transsexual people among others, have to contend with reaction from insecure supermajorities, yours is particularly tenuous. Supermajorities are king of the hill, and by definition try and keep everyone else off of it. But this particular hill, monogamy, is really rather unstable in a lot of ways. It's also a situation where we're trying to prove the lack of something. Imagine you were on vacation and ran into people who went to work in order to prove they were not on vacation. That is poly / open relationships' relationship to monogamy.
We're human, we attach all sorts of deep emotional meaning to things. All minorities get misunderstood. Think about how many religious people who can't imagine a moral system outside of a creed or a dogma, think atheists must be amoral beings. Never mind that there is so much science to contradict their underlying assumptions, they simply have an attachment to how they've done things, and they can't let go.
Many of us have spent a lifetime navigating monogamously, with each new thing coming up and being contested as to is it or is it not cheating, we are heavily invested in the psychology behind proving what it is we are not doing. It's the only sacrifice where you give something up for the express purpose of saying that you're giving it up. You can't account for every single new phenomenon that comes along. So you have a man who was indoctrinated that masturbation is cheating, a penthouse is cheating, even slapped (borderline playfully) for looking at an attractive woman that is not his wife. He's learned to navigate all this.
Now ... along comes Facebook. He friends a lot of people on there that he used to know. Not even ex-girlfriends, that being traditionally a very no-no territory for monogamists. Now, is he cheating? How is she going to prove to herself that he didn't do anything? Track record never accounts for much in these tenuous relationships because you're trying to prove what didn't happen. That isn't a criticism of her, it's a fact: you can't prove that something didn't happen. You can only prove that something did. Since the desired state is didn't, monogamists are constantly trying to interpret and re-interpret their changing world.
One is trying to see if this new way inspires cheating, or breaks a rule, and the other is trying to see if what they're maybe getting into is going to upset the partner.
Facebook was a perfect example, because beforehand there was nothing really quite like it. People who had spent their whole lives demonstrating that they didn't, if you will, were now questioned. Because how are you ever going to prove that you didn't do something? I know men who simply decided against ever getting a Facebook, because it was just easier. I myself have foregone things occasionally, and I didn't and still don't blame her for it: it's simply impossible to prove something didn't happen. Clear-cut example: I'm on a business trip, it's getting late, I'm in the hotel lobby and there's a Bourbon tasting or a wine tasting going on. I'm hanging out, sampling the wares and unwinding like everyone else. Some hot chicks came in and started mixing it up with us business travelers. Now I have a choice to make. Stay there, not flirt but enjoy things as I would. (I'm not really given to flirting anyway). Or, discreetly pick up a drink or several and exit for the balcony or my room. Why this choice? Because if it ever comes out where I was and what happened, how would I prove I didn't do anything? I can prove all day and night things that I actually did, but how do you prove that you didn't? And remember much of this fidelity business is about a woman's emotions. Anyone who has taken any sexual harassment class knows that it is always in the mind of the harassed, how hurt one is is always in the mind of the injured party. I might sometimes be able to predict the responses a partner might have, I will undoubtedly miss. I missed a couple times when Facebook was first out, not by doing anything forward, but having friended someone I didn't remember enough detail about when she asked questions about her. I hadn't seen this person in a couple decades and couldn't remember whether it was high school or college. And young people will not be at all immune from this when some new mode of communication or interaction comes along. It's a given, because we're all running around proving what didn't happen, and trying to decide what is and what isn't out of bounds.
What you are living is potentially hazardous to an unstable and insecure mindset. Not just insecurity on the part of the one doing the checking up on, but also on the part of the potentially-checked-up-on. The "If you're not doing anything wrong ..." argument simply doesn't hold water here, because it's impossible to prove what you didn't do. Also, the investigation techniques used usually involve some kinds of probing questions. If you didn't do something, and weren't interested in doing that thing, chances are you also lack sufficient detailed memory of what happend in that time frame. And humans of all persuasions are pretty sensitive to potentially evasive maneuvers. And your not knowing could very easily be explained as a cover rather than the truth. Remember the track record for not doing things, is rather nonexistent. How, for instance, do you intend to prove for us that you haven't killed somebody? I mean, just because we haven't found the body doesn't mean you haven't killed anybody. It just means you haven't gotten caught yet.
So I don't think it's personal, you just happen to be dealing with a supermajority whose foundation is about as tumultuous as Jupiter's atmosphere. We're chasing our tails proving we didn't do things, inventing new ways to claim someone else did do things we wish they didn't, and creating the mythology and storyline that helps us humans make sense out of nonsense.
What I honestly don't know is how well your types of relationships will fare in a postmodern capital-based industrial society. Obviously, with 2.5 million people in the U.S. alone and many more in Europe who have declared themselves either polyamorous or in open relationships, this is a larger group than many of us thought.
How you will navigate it, what sorts of problems you'll encounter and what that's going to look like in a post-industrial society with rather strict moral ethical codes, I don't know. I'm not sure how much can or will be drawn from the hunter-gatherer societies. Certainly our monogamy has been mainly drawn from the Middle East and refined by the Roman Catholic Church's attempt to manage inheritance and other property rights.
Presumably you all will draw from something, consciously or otherwise, even if some among you end up announcing vehemently that you're not doing so. We can't help doing so: it's human.
But anyway, I think if you really understand what monogamy is, and what at its core it tries to prove, you'll understand by its gross instability why you are frequently challenged. Unlike rescue workers who sacrifice to save people, or people who sacrifice money and possessions to better the lives of others, we in monogamy give something up for the express purpose of claiming that we're not doing anything. Sure it has the benefit of stabilizing an environment emotionally and capitally which is the property of a population who needs constant reassurance that that environment's stabilizers are functioning normally.
I'm not polyamorous, nor have I been in any open relationships, and so I honestly have no perspective on what sorts of human-based problems you will contend with. The most attractive part about the open situation to me is the lack of need to prove the absence of something. To that end, I can see how it would seem freeing, not in the 60s free love sense but you're free to not need to prove that nothing happened.
Every new monogamous couple finds this out when one finds something suspect that the othre is doing, and the other quite likely doesn't even know they're doing it. I don't mean anything so forward as flirting online. It's just how we are.
I will be watching with interest to see what you all face, and how you work it out. Hopefully you can remain in a state where you aren't trying to prove the absence of things which is a total logical impossibility.
So, if you feel challenged by monogamists, I'm quite sure it's not personal. People on here have been far more genteel than your typical supermajority groups are.
And even the most enlightened among monogamists here will someday face everything I said, because some new medium will come to play that they had never before accounted for, and their partner will be at a loss to prove that nothing happened. I can't prove to anyone online that I have never killed anyone. This is the essencde of the structure which upholds us as monogamists. Proving that nothing happened.
Speaking for myself and myself alone: I am much like Anthony; when I'm truly in love with someone, I don't really want anyone else. I can still find people attractive but I'm not about to go bang someone just because I think they're cute.
Wayne, denying your partner sex while you're unable to provide it is selfish, yes. But you're not denying them anything if they don't even seek it in the first place, or want it. If I say to my partner: You can't sleep with anyone else regardless of circumstances and neither can I" and he isn't okay with that, then keeping him with me would be selfish, absolutely. But if my partner and I both explicitly say that we neither want that freedom nor even want it to be granted as an option, then what's selfish about that? If coming to a mutually beneficial agreement with my partner about keeping our relationship exclusive is selfish, than I guess being selfish isn't so bad. If I'm selfish for doing what both my partner and I want, what we feel best and safest and most comfortable with, then selfish am I. But if we're both happy in our relationship, both getting exactly, explicitly what we want, then how on earth can you call that more selfish than an open relationship, which offers essentially the same thing? A mutual agreement that benefits both partners in the way they need and desire it to?
If my partner or I decide later on in our relationship that we'd rather push the door ajar than leave it tightly closed, then that can be discussed. There's no reason that we can't change with our desires and personal growth. Maybe a mutual understanding can be reached, and maybe it can't, but in any case there's no lock and key in sight. I'm currently doing what both my partner and I most would like, and I rather think that giving my partner freedom he neither wants nor will use, while demanding the same for myself, is just as selfish as denying him freedom he actually wants.
And, Leo, you're right that supermajorities often bully minorities and vilify them, but keep in mind that sometimes, when things turn around, it's the minorities or the oppressed group that begin to vilify the majority just for being the majority. Look at the feminist movement and how it vilified men? Look at how some people look at white, middle-class males as the ultimate enemy just because they were the majority in terms of power for a long time? Not actually claiming that people in open relationships (minority) are vilifying monogamists (the majority) only making a point that it can work both ways. Monogamists might call the minority greedy or selfish or unrestrained or what-have-you, but the minority seems just as ready, at least on occasion, to sling back the exact same insults and generalized claims. And let me say again, not saying anybody on -this board has done this, only illustrating a point.
Both good points, Meglet. On the selfish thing, I will only say that what is selfish and what is self-less is hard to define. Am I really self-less to make my wife happy, especially since her happiness I have confessed is a need of mine? It's hard to define.
As to the agreement aspect, I honestly don't know how they are going to work that stuff out. We monogamists have it pretty easy because of centuries of codified methods for how this gets done. Even unmarried monogamists, while a few decades ago had problems, have codified contracts like domestic partnerships that mirror marriage in more ways than not. I think your questions are fair, but I wonder if the jury is mainly still out on most of this stuff for the open relationships in a western society. Because just like we can't really impose Catholic monogamy on indigenous peoples without some damage done to existing culture, it might be that these open relationships by definition will cause rumblings in ours. I don't mean personally, but just imagine: You want to rent a house to some people. Domestic partnership? Used to be not fine 30 plus years ago: all the arguments about who owns what responsibility. But fine now.
So, how about to an open family where there are three or four partners? It could get done under house sharing, a common practice now at least here in Portland with a lot of young people. But strictly under the guise of, here's our family wanting to move in? Lends itself currently to a lot of contractually sticky situations which will have to work themselves out and it will probably take decades.
Again that is not personal to the open relationship people, it's just in a structured society like ours codified agreements are just so much simpler to deal with.
And your point about the minority bullying the majority is valid as everyone from the demographics you speak of knows. So far, the open / poly people have yet to assert themselves in any kind of activist campaign for either rights or demands for compensation of prior damages. We'll have to see how that one works out also. Guess there's just a lot of loose ends on this one.
Agreed. And Leo, are you talking about -my questions in your post? I'm not sure which questions you're referring to, exactly. The selfishness point I understand, but I got a bit lost when you started talking about my questions in relation to domestic partnerships and whatnot. Am I missing something?
Yes but as it pertains to agreements and how they work, and how much has been reinvented even with monogamist couples in light of domestic partner arrangements. Only it could be very difficult, to my mind at least, for these newer types to codify the types of agreements and structures our society is built to accommodate. That was all I meant. That, and, many of the questions posed by monogamists here will surface precisely because of the new nature of things and lack of precedent for their agreements.
I only mentioned domestic partnerships because this was another arrangement many found difficult to comprehend decades ago, and had all the same questions, including the selfish question. Went from 'living in sin' to 'POSLQ' (I still don't know that acronym's definition), to now the semi legal definition of domestic partner.
It may have gone off easier because these were still heteronormative monogamists at least in name.
Just saying that while all those challenges were there, there's maybe an extra dimension to this one, unless someone gets really good at codifying it in a neat structured package for the structured among us to understand it.
That was all. Sorry if that was unclear.
But Meglet I said exactly what you said. I didn't disagree with that, just explained where we felt people were selfish. Smile.
I know this is as Leo says really difficult for others to grasp, but it is really not so hard.
No one is hurt, no one is used, mis treated.
In a society where you have more women than men is why the Muslims practice a form of openness.
If a man can afford it, he can have 4 wives. The reason they enjoy it is because no woman should be without a husband or the opportunity to have children, a family
I once listen to a leader talking about this. He stated there were 8 million of them. Over 6 million were women.
He said why should our women have to live alone? He meant sexless, without children, because they aren’t supposed to be lesbians. Smile.
Now if you take out all the men that die in war, gangs, are in prison and such things, and you add the number of them that are gay we have less men to go around.
Even if you subtract the number of women who are lesbian, women still outnumber men something like 5 to one.
This is probably why more people as Leo stated are practicing relationships that involve more than one partner, men and women.
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believe me, leo, I'm not taking anything personally, especially things said on an online forum, where people are supposed to discuss whatever subject is at hand, exactly as they see things.
like many things in life, though, I'm sure it's gonna be common to get those types of reactions, which is exactly why I keep coming back to weigh in. cause, as I've said before, dialogue is important.
thank you, Wayne, for your last post. right on.
Wayne...I simply don't understand. Maybe I'm dense, I dunno. But where did I claim that open relationships involve people getting used or hurt? And where is there evidence that monogamy, by its nature, involves people getting hurt or used by default? That can certainly happen, but every type of lifestyle has that problem, no matter how good it is. All I've ever been trying to point out is that I see monogamy and open relationships on an entirely level playing field. If one is selfish, than so is the other. They're both fine. Do what works, that's all I've ever been trying to say. If I'm missing something, feel free to set me straight, but I really don't think we're saying the same thing here. It sounds like you're trying to tell me that open relationships are unselfish but monogamy is, at least by default. I'd be willing to take the selfishness argument right out and say that they both have merits, depending on the parties involved.
Meglet, only the top of my post was directed at you. The rest was musing.
The part directed was that we had said the same thing about selfishness.
Smile.
This has certainly been a learning experience, and I do have one thing I think poly families will have to contend with.
Any of us who grew up in huge families knows that larger social groups require niches for people, intentional or otherwise. So if every person in the unit does not have a niche, you are likely to have members feeling disillusioned or even used. On the opposite front, large groups tend to have the problem of members feeling pigeon-holed.
All of this would take profound communication and openness to overcome, which is probably why some monogamists think they're somehow slighted when this is brought up. This is not to say us monogamists don't need communication, just the situation is compounded when you add more human beings into the mix.
The way I feel educated, in any useful fashion, is that learning about this has forced me to look at what I'm doing. Again, I never thought any of this out. The jealousy / fidelity aspect is key: like I said, we monogamists are trying to prove what didn't happen. That is a logical impossibility.
I will go so far as to now admit I was wrong to ever tell her "Just look at my track record, you know I've never done that." Except that track records are made of what we have done, not what we haven't done. And I now understand the gross instability that is us monogamists, especially emotions typically attributed to the human female. Some people owned a very traditionalist stance on here with surprising courage. Understanding plus compassion can equal acceptance at least for many of us, and this is what I have come to. As important as we see sexual fidelity, as monogamists at least, it seems we also need to give place to (usually) the female expressions of insecure jealousy, which are arguably somewhat logical since I can't prove that something did not happen.
And that something isn't just sleeping around, even tone of voice with people, a pat (for those more given to affection outside the home) or friendships with the opposite sex. In truth, a friend of mine is right in his observation that the state of the heterosexual monogamous Western male is nearly the same as the state of the Middle Eastern monogamous female. Barring of course those areas given to misogynistic violence.
So it took the polys, a group wholly different from many of us, to bring at least some of us to a fuller understanding and more whole acceptance of our own situation. Fidelity, wich is comprised of the lack of something, is only useful to her insofar as she can verify that lack. And by necessity we have to use that word "verify" very loosely, not in the engineering sense, but it is an area wholly governed by the potentially-injured-party. I say "her" in this instance, because it does seem to bear out that the state of the monogamous female is particularly vulnerable, and perhaps the biologists are right who argue prolonged vulnerability in agricultural and industrial societies of human females after childbirth.
So perhaps, to the ire of some, the polys are in whole correct about us, by external observation. that certainly doesn't make us wrong and them right. It only helps to paint the whole picture as to what fidelity even entails. It's the absence of something, and so is only useful insofar as she feels secure. And it's her prerogative to determine what that looks like. So some men in domestic agreements, such as myself, have agreed to not patronize the local Hooters establishment, while others may be allowed to go there but not to some other place. And, for the record, it was not because I'd done anything untoward at a Hooters, and I imagine it's the same for most men I know who agreed to similar restrictions.
It doesn't start out this way, but the more invested she is in the relationship, actually living together for some years, the more this stuff is likely to come up.
Your typical marriage book will tell men that if they pay her enough attention, in the way that she wants it and when she wants it, she will not suspect you of infidelity. Now, I know somebody who was accused of infidelity because he stepped up his game and tried to be more sensitive at home and do more. He was quite a bit older than I am, and so wasn't raised with the types of egalitarian rolelessness we now take for granted. Instead of the desired effect, she immediately started wondering if this is how he was with other women.
Before anyone can class her as shallow, she's only acting on the natural female privilege that comes with monogamy: attempting to prove the absence of something. If you'd asked her, she'd say she didn't believe he'd done anything extracurricular before. But, there's always what if, when you're trying to prove what didn't happen.
Don't believe me? Now go take a niece or a nephew who is afraid of the dark and prove to them there are no monsters. It goes something like this: "Ok, Johnny, let's look under the bed. See? Nothing there. No, those are just dust bunnies. Now let's look in the closet. See? Just clothes and things." ... and on and on.
And when you're all done? "Yes, but daddy, when you turn off the light, that's when the monsters come out." Every parent who's bought a night light knows this. By challenging the norms, the poly people have demonstrated the need for a night light in the context of fidelity.
If they don't happen to have these vulnerabilities, or don't want to live with someone who does, it makes sense they would call their way freeing. Just like for someone like me, I would find their way potentially very confusing, keeping track of more than one partner's set of preferences, tastes, buttons to not push, and interact in a meaningful way.
I know most the discussion has been about sex in the poly community. It's like what I heard at an AIDS conference in the late 1980s: Most people want to know how homosexuals have sex, but don't care much about how they relate." We always sexualize minorities, whether it's the black rapist of the white supremacist, the male rapist of the feminist, or the atheist sexual deviant of the religious person. Even "witches" were highly sexualized by the Catholic church, who invented some pretty fetishistic fantasies about what they allegedly did with the devil. We always do that: I used to as a kid in the early80s when we'd titter about the swingers, or talk about the gays, and even with the polys I first had the question "Who does what to whom?"
But now at least, I think I can say I have grown in understanding in practical terms, some aspects of monogamy that otherwise cause angst. Realizing that the polys are right, regarding ownership and exclusivity, and also having the engineering background to understand how illogical it is to prove that an event didn't happen. I can be far more understanding of the need for the human female to consistently verify what is solely her property and prerogative, that emotional security that can only come from exclusivity. I think some of us thought, myself included, that with roleless egalitarian relationships the old insecurities would go away. But again, people on here have admitted to some very traditional human behaviors with some pretty startling boldness and courage.
I, for one, have learned a few things I didn't even consider before, and connected a few dots that formerly made no sense. Thanks in part to a group so wholly different from us in relationships anyway, that it's hard for us to really understand them.
So it looks like someone has figured a lot of this out, as it pertains to the poly people or people in open relationships, how to manage jealousy.
Ironically much of what I read could be applied to a heteronormative monogamous relationship, in terms of how to manage jealousy. Of course, with us monogamists it's not having any other partners but her perception of activities. Anyway pretty enlightening, from the perspective of someone who never really looked at all this stuff except for the heteronormative marriage material that wives and tiehr friends usually bring around.
Just found it enlightening, even if it did in part solidify my thinking that things could get awful confusing, unless all functioned as a family unit. They said it takes six months for that stuff to settle in, and that has been said even of monogamous relationships: you either know or you don't within six months' time.
I believe in the six months rule too.
If a person is being themselves, after 6 months if they are faking they settle down to what they are, think, and believe.
I have also learned it is not going to work when they say they agree with your lifestyle choices.
If you are a spender, you'll be a spender. Not clean, you'll not get clean.
Only that person can decide to change, and if they are happy as they are you'll not get them to do things your way.
You know about them pretty much in 6 months.
I believe in that rule, too, for the same reasons Wayne mentioned.
Makes perfect sense.
Leo, what a great post. I second that: thanks for educating me, guys; I sincerely appreciate it.
Here's another article, this one being on what is termed the new monogamy, from a psychotherapist's standpoint, and the types of agreements people agree to, and coming from all sorts of demographics. They also address how people's expectations change over time. Even addressing the friends of opposite sex issue which most people start out being ok with but at least some (arguably quite a few) can perceive as cheating later.
Well, I found this article by accident--regarding polyamory--and I thought I'd post it here because not only is it an interesting read, but it's well-written.
It confirms my theory that open relationships really can't be handled well by most humans--and that no matter how pleasant the idiology of an open lifestyle seems, when you get down to it, the pesky little things called emotions tend to complicate it all quite a bit--no matter how some of us insist that such complications can be avoided.
Thoughts?
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/20/our_polyamory_disaster/
Ok Bernadetta.
First, I will shamelessly explain my support of these things. It's people like you, who, a generation ago, had all the same accusations thrown up at you. Single moms partying, drugs, sex, never love, lots and lots of sex, use sex to demonize, show a really garish druggie rich white party lifestyle that looks like it dropped out of a 1970s Disko, update the stimulants used and change the clothes and terms a bit. Sound familiar? It does: My gay friends suffer at the hands of such a propaganda machine, usually set out as Testimony Time in an article like this one, insinuating this is being gay, or being a single mother, or being polyamorous.
I call into question this article, not because the story didn't happen: sounds like it did, amid a lot of other things. Sounds an awful lot like "Life In the Fast Lane" by the Eagles.
So while I may come off as insincere to you and others, because I just don't want to see us act towards a new less accepted group the way we did towards you and gays and others, I don't believe I'm all wet on this one. Remember, even blacks were oversexualized, and their relationships during slavery had love minimized and carnal sexuality maximized. This is sadly a classic way to dehumanize groups of people. Do I think the author is doing this? Maybe a little, maybe none: He's had some serious second thoughts after the fact, and yet he can't seem to separate the disko ball party 4some strung-out lifestyle from polyamory, and you took the bait. Not just you, everyone who doesn't like it, and everyone who didn't like your unwed mother status a generation ago did the very same thing.
You ever notice when people tear apart gays, unwed mothers, atheists, Jews, I don't care what group, they always have the same story going on? Four-somes, parties with stimulants, a crash at the end and oh so sorry we did that, and we should never have. And nobody separates out the details enough to say, wow, these people were so jacked up on speed it's no wonder they crashed!
My friend and her wife hear time and time again about all these gays from the 70s, marginalized more than now of course, who turned to drugs and diskos and parties, and ended up with no meaning in their life. Except, you party like that no matter your orientation or ethnic heritage or what have you, you end up in a world of hurt most times. This is the same propaganda they use against porn stars also. Fallwell loved doing that.
Now, I'm not attacking you personally Bernadetta, we're all susceptible. I certainly was more so when I was younger. Perhaps I have gone the other way too much, who knows. But you see the same story with different characters in different clothes targeting a marginalized group, with a former insider who has second thoughts, I am suspect. I'm sorry I bought the party line 25 years ago when it was Murphy Brown and Michelle Fifer and everyone saying how unstable a home was with an unwed mother. You had all these shrinks and normal people, not rabid fundamentalist types, normal people, reading this racy material in magazines about how they ended up, and believing it. And yet, look at you. Look at over half the women I know. Just regular people happen to not be married but the kids grow up just fine.
Now, what about jealousy? I think we're all a bit jealous, greedy, what's-mine-is-mine, and so on. Even your hippie who pretends not to care about material possessions, will go bolistic if you steal his guitar, the one he took to Kent State back in the 60s. I think some of polys' ideas are a bit unrealistic, personally. Should they be marginalized? Hell no, every marginalized group we've had has done nothing but show us how stupid we are for marginalizing groups of humans. I have a young relative who was polyamorous, has changed, has a steady long-term relationship, and doesn't feel a bit bad for what she did. She got to know who she was, she says, and she told me it was worth doing for awhile.
Personally all the characters in your story there make my head spin, and make me again realize how I couldn't really manage such a situation's mechanics, let alone getting to the feelings involved.
So at worst, I am insincere in some people's eyes, because I am extremely reluctant for us as a society to marginalize these groups of people. Especially when we have stories like this that could be (and will probably be) sold to a church group as a lesson on just how awful those polyamorous folks are. Dehumanizing, oversexualizing the lifestyle, without the integrity to acknowledge the role mass amounts of stimulants had in the situation. Clarity? Give me a break, that's not clarity they were feeling! What that was was an immense rush which *feels* like clarity. But he did great: trotted on out like a good little penitent, speaking from the insider's view, and of course saying how terrible the situation is.
I've already heard that I must be polyamorous because I stand behind their rights, even if I don't get it. But again, this was claimed about straights must be gay when they stand up for their gay friends.
I know there are different polyamorous groups, closed, open and all that, probably many I don't even know about. I only wish you'd found an article that didn't come from the play book used against women in your very situation a generation ago, or people like my friend and her wife, and almost every other marginalized group out there. I'm sure the author is sincere, especially in his second thoughts. By the way, news flash: most of us who have used drugs and been in any kinds of relationships have had serious second thoughts when the drug taking is over, especially this is true of stimulants. Stimulants like meth make you feel totally invincible. Only because they were in a marginalized group, their second thoughts after drug use get trotted out as evidence that all the group's members must be unstable or unhealthy or something.
The story just played way too conveniently from the book that's been played on every other group on the planet who was marginalized. This post is not a case for polyamory, it's a case for being honest about what was really going on, and not playing to the majority's interest in marginalizing. Because truth be told, everyone I have known who lived a high roller party lifestyle without exception had second thoughts later, no matter their color or orientation or marital status.
At 25 I would have bought this, perhaps. But Murphy brown and Michelle Fifer have come and gone, gays have raised kids to adulthood, unwed mothers and unwed fathers have grandkids now and kids running Fortune 500 companies. So someone needs to do something spectacular in order to convince me to be down on another lifestyle at this point. By spectacular I definitely don't mean replay Disko Ball from the 1970s with a new set of clothes, or otherwise mix and match sets of irresponsible behaviors and tack it onto the lifestyle up for a punch.
As I said, I think everyone is just a little bit jealous, in our Western society, and i'm not polyamorous. But that doesn't change a lot of things: It doesn't change the island societies who practice it, women and men, and it doesn't change that there may be compatibility issues between polyamory and industrialization.
Maybe instead of disko ball and speedball stories, someone who backs the so-called science about hormones and women and jealousy should tell us why that doesn't apply to women in island societies, and why it didn't used to apply before agriculture. Such findings could actually be very useful. it might even help us understand why the draw for 2.5 million Americans to polyamory now. After all, I doubt any of the rest of us really understands that draw.
Hold on a second, leo. No one's marginalizing anyone here--at least not in my last post. I think perhaps you are a bit parenoid about the unfairness heaped on to the various lifestyles you mentioned, etc.
All I meant to say in my last post is that I simply don't think polyamory can work longterm from an emotional standpoint. I didnt' say it's unhealthy. I didnt' say those people who choose to practice it are immoral. I do think that kids probably have less stability--stability as we know it in the western society that is--than those in nuclear families.
Oh, and newsflash--In many homes ofsingle parents, stability lacks as well--just as it does it households where both parents are traditionally married but very miserable and dysfunctional. You cant' cover up that fact.
My point, aside from all of what you said, was that someone's bound to get caught up in the kind of dramatic emotional mess as the people in the story--no matter how careful you are. And I dotn' even care about eh drugs. I wasn't even looking at that aspect of the story, to be honest. I was reading it from a purely emotional standpoint.
It's true that tere are no guarantees--not in a monogamous relationship--not in an open relationship...
In a monogamous relationship, where two people agree to be exclusive you can run into problems as well, am I correct? And often times, the problem that arises is a third person that may or may not be involved with one of the peopel in the exclusive relationship.
Now, you suggest that we should ask the question of why polyamory or open relationships work for one person and not the next--why they work for people in other societies and not in our western culture...And here's my theory.
You brought up a good point that polyamory could work to the family's advantage industrially and businesswise. Thats' very true. The more people pitching in, the better, right?
And what did people used to get married for back in the day--and even now, in some cultures. They got married for economical reasons, not for love. Love in an arranged or economical marriage comes second--and that's if it comes at all.
I think that in some cultures polyamory works because people can distance themselves from the emotional aspect of one-on-one intimacy. They've seen their parents do it, they're neighbors do it, and even if they do feel any amount of jealously, they play it down as absurd. And so they manage and all is well.
But our western society is very focused on emotions. Emotions of children, emotions of women, emotions regarding intimacy, and what not. Why do the poorest of people get together and set up house when they could just as easily find mates that are better off then the two of them, in order to give their kids a better economic status. It's because the poor couple bases their need to be together on emotions. Logical reasons to stay together or be apart are thrown out the window--such as their lack of money, housing and what not.
In the islands, as you say, women understand that men need to have as many ofspring as possible--and that's teh sign of riches, etc. so the accept being a wife of many, for instance.
I think, however, that if people practice polyamory from a purely emotional standpoint, it probably won't be a practical lifelong strategy. That's all I'm saying here.
Do most people who practice an open relationship or polyamory even want a lifelong strategy? I dont' know. Maybe not. and it that case, that's fine and dandy. You said yourself that someone you knwo has switched from practicing a polyamorous lifestyle to being in a longterm relationship. If it had worked so well for her, dont' you think she might have incorporated her new partner into her lifestyle instead of leaving the polyamorous lifestyle altogether and embarking on a monogamous journey?
That's my point: that from an emotional standpoint, I dont' think it ever really works longterm.
You're right, I am arguably paranoid about the marginalization thing, and if I was unfair I am sorry. Call it growing up through the 1980s where gays were blamed for aids and any number of other groups were marginalized, and I as a young fool took part in what was popular then, I've rather lived to regret that thinking altogether. So my own bias is clear, not biased toward polyamory but away from attaching commonly-misplaced things to it.
Honestly? While you saw the emotions, I saw the drugs in that article, I related to being flipped out on uppers. I don't know how much of the recreational drug lifestyle you have been involved in, excluding pot and booze, but serious uppers usage does some amazing distortions to one's perceptions of oneself.
You could be completely right about polyamory. I'll be honest, figuring it all out is a bit much, for me, at least. The names and faces in that story kind of made my head spin with confusion, and I read Tom Clancy who can put more characters into a story than anyone I've seen.
I'll clearly admit my bias, born out of, like you said, being paranoid of us making the same types of mistakes we as society have done over and over again.
I take all your points, but still remain cautious to make any assersions about it working or not. If they are marginalized, then they will have a lot of instability that comes with being marginalized, so it may take time before we know what problems are polyamory and what problems are from their position in society. A lawyer acquaintance told me once he thought there wouldn't be any problem with polyamorous marriages, you'd just set it up like a corporate contract rather than just with two people. According to him anyway, the biggest difficulty would be getting it supported politically. Honestly, I don't know. And what flavors of polyamory would survive, if any, in our society. My guess is those that most closely resemble monogamy, meaning you have a few people in love with each other but are closed to outside relationships.
Some in the Queer Culture now call it 'going straight' when gays get married, their criticism being gays that marry are just emulating straights. But that's how minorities get by: emulate the majorities in social contracts and public interactions. Nothing wrong with that. I'd think if polyamorous people really make it, they'll probably either emulate how we do things, or do like the commune in San Francisco did in the 80s, and live as a commune or something.
Okay, I read the article, and it was interesting.
The Arthur doesn’t understand what a polyandries relationship is about.
The Arthur also missed what an actual open relationship is, or what I like to think of as a free relationship.
What was described was fun, but only for a night, or entertainment, it wasn’t a relationship.
The people were partying, it was drug fueled, and the settings were not day to day living.
It was purely about sex, and sex only, not about love or giving at all.
Now, sure, the couple loved each other, but they never set down and decided as individuals they were able mentally to deal with knowing, let alone seeing their partner being with and or having sex with another person.
I think that choice or decision has to be made alone, and then you find someone that agrees.
These people wanted to be seen, the live of the party. It wasn’t about we need space sometimes, or multiple partners for health reasons, or to keep things from getting sticky, because one of them wanted to experience another person, but didn’t want to leave the home.
True polyandries is when 3 people are a team, or 4. They are in the relationship for love with each other, not for party reasons, and this is day to day living.
Mainly it is 3 2 women 1 man, or 2 men 1 woman, but it is a sharing, not a to be seen deal.
To be in an open relationship or a sharing requires must self-esteem. You have to feel wanted, and know you are special to your lover even when she or he is with another person, you still count in their hearts and lives.
I admit it is not for everyone, and that is probably due to people being raised to want others as their own, not for love, but loneliness fixing.
But I will say this article is the view most people think when they think open relationships. Wild sex!
Bernadetta, the article you posted is just one person's experience, and a hugely inaccurate representation of what open relationships are, as I, and others who share my views, see them.
for starters, there was no talk anywhere about expectations or wants, much less what open relationships actually entail.
then, there's the fact that the people in said article were all doing this for fun, which, in my mind, makes it disingenuous.
in a truly open relationship, as Wayne and I've talked about, there's openness across the board. openness about people's wants, expectations, concerns, fears, you name it.
before I go any further, people are still lumping open relationships, and polliamerous ones, into the same category. they aren't one in the same, at all. I'll explain the difference again, if anyone wants clarification.
the majority of society doesn't have to believe that open relationships are just as loving, emotionally involved, or enriching as traditional relationships. however, to unfairly assume that those of us who believe they work best for us don't deal with commitment well, or couldn't possibly be committed to the people we're with, is sorely misguided.
for us, commitment means making sure everyone is happy and satisfied in the here and now, rather than subscribing to the view that people in traditional relationships hold, of, "I wanna be with you forever, and I'll never stray from that, no matter what the circumstances become."
open relationships clearly aren't for everyone, just as every woman doesn't like getting manicures, peticures, or massages, or every man doesn't like sports. however, I think that, if more people truly aimed to understand the whys of why some of us believe so strongly that open relationships not only work, but can be just as meaningful as traditional relationships, more folks would at least be open to the possibility of giving them an honest chance.
Island societies are not the ones wanting women to have as many kids as possible, or men either. That doesn't make for survival in a resource-restricted environment.
Also, if a relative changed her mind. I would not be so gauche as to claim it can't work for 2.5 million Americans, some of which have grown kids. We've all heard stories about how someone just couldn't live with their disability.
If you want to see how to make your case against a group, google "A Case Against Religious Polygamy," I forget the author's name.
I don't know how someone can read the article here and miss the drugs and L.A. lifestyle in there. Either they're really good now at conditioning people against drug use or you read the article to hear what supported your beliefs. Silly me, I was looking for something like the case against religious polygamy. I say silly me, because this is coming from Salon.com. The sex read like a party mag from the 80s, while I was hit in the face with a bit of a blast from the past by all the drugs, implied and explicit.
Also, like Wayne said, this was rich people wanting to be seen. I Malaboo, anyone? Hangers-on to Baywatch, maybe? If this is they got as a case against polyamory, nothing new here. Quite unlike a very thought-out case written against religious polygamy. In that article, he never uses the destabilizers common to all marginalized groups.
I never again want to attribute those kinds of destabilizers to a group like that, because I have lived to regret that decision.
You are right that we place a premium on emotion. And some of that emotion is the ick factor that comes with second thoughts when a relationship style doesn't work out, an ick factor my relative does not share. Some of these surrounding the othering of groups to make ourselves feel better, something I am distinctly not proud of from my own youth.
But hey, as a fantasy read like the street mag from the 80s, the article was fun: lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and a little titilation that accompanies watching the rich party, crash and burn. A lot different than the 2 thoughtful documentaries I've seen explaining polyamorous households.
in defense of leo's relative who was in a polly relationship but no longer is, I think it's lame to say, "it didn't work so well for her, now, did it?"
no one says that for any traditional relationship of theirs that doesn't last, so why should relationships that differ from the norm receive such treatment?
the point is, the polly lifestyle worked for this person at one time. and, given the numerous discussions I've had with leo about it, the person did their research, and went into things with an open mind, wanting to learn and grow, whether it lasted a lifetime, or not.
so, I, for one, am glad to hear of that story, and truly applaud leo's relative for having the figurative balls to try something that's unwelcomed by many, and grow where she probably otherwise wouldn't have.
and, leo, I also wanna commend you for wanting to learn about this stuff. I realize you may have experienced the "ick" factor, initially, but it's refreshing to see you're moving forward, and trying to encourage others to do the same.
dialogue is an important first step to heading in a different direction than we're currently in, so I'm glad this topic was brought back up.
Last to add to Chelsea’s and my argument.
All open relationships aren’t about having more kids, economics, survival, and other factors. Some are simply about understanding yourself, in that you might want to experience intimacy with another person, but not wish to leave your mate for them.
In some cases it is about sexuality. A woman understands or a man understands they like the opposite sex, so are bisexual, but want to have a regular relationship.
In the woman’s case she likes women, but desires men more, and wishes to have kids, raise a family. The man is the opposite, desiring women more, but liking men. They have come to grips with themselves, so instead of hiding sexuality, the face it and have open relationships.
Some have the partner live in, others just want the other sex on occasion.
I am only talking open, not polyamorous. Chelsea pointed out, these are different.
What this article represents is called swinging. Swinging can be a part of an open relationship, but is done for entertainment, not as the rule.
Thanks for the kind words, Chelsea, and the explanations, Wayne.
Chelsea, this tactic is a typicall 'othering' tactic. The reasons for it not working out for her was because she wanted a partner and a best friend. For her that meant not just monogamy but monogamy with one particular person she has found. She didn't just say eww poly is so unnatural and unstable and I should never have done that.
It's easiest for us to other groups of people for two reasons:
1. the ick factor, or 2. the second thoughts / it went wrong for me / everyone who does that stuff must be wrong factor.
Your so-called gateway drug attitude towards marijuana was promulgated by a lot of people in number 2 camp who said if they hadn't done pot they would never have tried meth or coke. That only works to fool peple who have done neither. There's no comparison between dope and speed, there just isn't. But if you want to other all people who use marijuana recreationally you tie them in with jittering speed freaks.
Don't get me wrong: I've had second thoughts about a lot of things in life. But true second thoughts don't tear apart a lifestyle, they just analyze what happened individually and how individually it could be different.
There's really no relationship at all between what Bernadetta described in earlier posts about her one open relationship, and these swinging high rollers. I'm guessing Bernadetta hasn't been a serious drug users or she'd have caught that whole scene right out of the article. Parts of the day-to-day addict stuff in that article I probably missed too, since I was more the weekend warrior in the drugs department, and my only experience with addicts and daily users was people I knew, though some of them I have known quite well.
That waking up / second thoughts / resentment is straight out of addicts' anonymous 101. Even I can see that and I've never cracked a course on shrinkology. Just wiped up their piss occasionally and rolled 'em over so they wouldn't choke on their own puke.
A real addict would see all that shit in the article in ways we don't. And trust me, these people were addicted. You could weekend warrior uppers in the 90s and get away without addiction but not the way they were doing it all the time. The post-party divorce, crash and burn, straight outa addicts 101. Had they been monogamous and done this, they'd have had all the resentment they wanted towards each other for different reasons. But polyamory is the latest political football like the gays before them, so it must have been the polyamory, right? It was just one toke over the line, is what that was. Clarity from the crystal pipe, yeah, I think we kinda all been there done that at some point. Far the fuck out, man.
You know the interesting thing about swingers, and people that just have group sex at parties, is swingers don't usually like using drugs at their events.
Some drinking, but not heavy drugs.
The reason for this, is drugs sometimes will change a persons personality.
If you are swinging for pleasure, you want to have a good evening or event. Drama will not only cause you and your partner issues, but everyone else.
To swing, you must bring a mate, so that everyone at the event or gathering is paired to someone.
If you are doing couples, the couples meet over dinner and drinks and talk about expectations. They learn if they are interested in the other couples mate for them as well, because it must be an even swap.
Interesting, huh? Smile.
leo, just to clarify, when I talked about having the "ick" factor, it was in reference to Bernadetta's opinion that just cause the polly lifestyle didn't work for your relative, doesn't mean she regrets it, or that she wouldn't be open to participating in it sometime down the road.
also, I wanna touch on something that Wayne said earlier, that I forgot to comment on.
in open relationships, it's absolutely essential for those involved in them to have a high self-esteem.
this is why many people couldn't ever see themselves in such relationships, cause they aren't/wouldn't be okay with their partner looking at other women, touching other women, or talking about being sexual with other women.
personally, nothing would bring me more happiness than to hear how my man enjoyed himself with another woman.
maybe there's something she does that I don't, that he has unexpectedly discovered he loves. so, in hearing how much it rocked his world, and the whys of it, I'll ultimately be better off, cause I'll be able to incorporate that into our life together.
in most other situations, and with most other people, the majority of society would likely agree with me that life is about growing, and learning all we can to become better people, for ourselves, as well as for the world around us.
it's just an extension of that belief, for me, that growing and learning shouldn't stop, just cause it's a significant other in the picture, who has learned something from another lover that he feels would be beneficial for me to know, as well.
Wayne's right about traditional swiging, but here is where anyone who hasn't lived on the Left Coast might miss this. SmellA / Hollywood are just a totally different ballgame.
I'll admit I haven't thought seriously about doing any type of uppers in years but that damn article full of all the inside innuendo, I'm not gonna lie, made me just a wee bit curious what that shit would do to me now at my age. Not curious enough to jeopardize things but damn!
And yeah, Wayne's right, uppers totally turn your personality. Shy person becomes a total aggressor on that stuff. Not saying violent, I know many of us weekend warrior types who never got violent with the opposite sex on that stuff, but yeah over the top invincible feeling.
And here's the other side, the dirty side of that equation. When you come down, you itch all over, then you really get the clarity. It's like waking up except you wake up to find it wasn't a dream, you really did that shit. You don't have the luxury of blacking out when on uppers. That simply doesn't happen. But you itch like hell, you wanta crash but can't unless you do some sort of downer to get there. Think speedballing except some young people out here say they haven't heard that word anymore so don't know what it is the young people call that. Anyway these people in that article for sure used either smack or maybe some prescription downers, or like many of us unwilling to do smack, just knock off with a ton of booze.
Your body feels like crap afterwards, trust me. Whatever lifestyle persuasion terminology you wanta assign to it, all tweakers come down the same way, except those who went too far and got hooked, which is a hell of a lot easier to do now with the stronger shit they got now.
In short, they seriously weren't thinking. They did have a lot of emotions, like Bernadetta said. That stuff does anything but dull the senses and emotions.
You know how people are attracted to getting a buzz on to unwind, and maybe just dull the senses a little bit? People who want the pick-me-up (not just caffeine) want that feeling of clarity and invincibility.
But it ain't clarity no matter what lifestyle we're trotting out to naysay. I felt lots of clarity from that stuff, sure but it's not clarity. It's playing with your emotions and making you feel like you are getting clarity.
Oh and paranoia? Yeah you bet. people associate that with pot but you can get plenty paranoid on uppers. It happens. And the last person you blame when in that state is yourself. He got it right when he said they started to blame one another and resent one another. Yuppers, sounds like speed freak central to me. No more, and no less.
Except all the money and malaboo sex and the Hollywood Hills. Go listen to Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles, especially if you didn't hear that song growing up. There ya go: that article could be said to have influenced that song, if that song hadn't been written decades before the article.
For better or worse, the druggie burnout story we were treated to yesterday stimulated something in me brain, and I tried my hand at a few old songs I hadn't played in a couple decades. Far out, people, Ridin' that Train, One Toke Over The Line, all that shit. Lol
Yeah man!
So I was reading on an unrelated subject, about people and numbers being a cultural construct.
Here is a society where people only count to five.
What was interesting was, they talked about if you asked one of the people how many children he had and he had six, how would he answer? He would find it a foolish question, because children are the responsibility of the entire group. The article points to numbers as existing in human culture for only the past 10,000 years, since agriculture. That's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
Fascinating, but then again back in college I always found anthropology fascinating.
I had to bring this topic back up, cause I read a book the other day that relates to what's being discussed, here. it's called ethical slut, and I consider it the best book I've read.
it talks about polyamorous relationships, and brings up an interesting argument, which is, if being polyamorous truly goes against nature, why do we as humans lust after each other?
cause, as I've said before, in other recent posts, relationships truly aren't black and white, despite the fact society pushes so hard for them to be seen as such.
although all my relationships thus far have been monogamous, I know that being polyamorous is how I'd be happiest.
I wanna live freely, and love in abundance, in whatever ethical ways those in my life allow me to.
Interesting argument.
I think sometimes lust in a monogamous, relationship is breeded by selfishness in that same relationship. People simply forget to date.
I'm comfortable in monogamous, , and have been in open type or relationships were I've dated two people at the same time, and these are good as well.
I've been thinking about this as it relates to me. As a single person, open type relationships work best for me, because I feel I need to learn what a person is going to give me, plus I don't have to be in love to share sex, just like a person as a friend.
Because sex is not love, that works.
Now, if I decide to become married, or live in that type of relationship, I could be happy monogamous, , provided my partner was a giver.
If everyone is not on the same page in these relationships on this boarde, they are difficult, so it really takes people that are totally happy with themselves, and not concerned with being left. There is simply no reason to leave a relationship because of sex, and I truly think if you have a good sex life in a monogamous, relationship, if you want sex with another, it will just be for variety, and not because you are wanting to leave your partner.
This should be a shared event, or giving.
Maybe it if fear of not being enough, or fear and jealousy that makes us cling. That I haven't figured out, just my thinking.
It these things were removed, sex would just be a pleasure thing, not a binding affair. The real love is outside of sex, and the sex just is a way to share a deep pleasure with your loved one, but so is a good conversation, or just sleeping in the same bed and waking up with them.
I think people's reasons for claiming monogamy is the best way to be boil down to two main things, which are tradition (this is the way it has always been, so let's keep it that way) and possessiveness (I want what I perceive to be mine/no one else can have this person, at the same time as I'm with them).
personally, I know I'll never again be happy being monogamous, for the simple fact that I want whoever I'm with to have absolute freedom, and I of course would want the same for myself.
A couple things:
Clearly there are voices who must defend the supermajority as though it were a frail thing, much like we see in religions. And there are voices like Chelsea's who defend a current minority - at least in industrialized nations - as though it were new, although it was the norm before agriculture.
And there are those of us like myself who, invested in one camp or the other, play the role of observer or virtual anthropologist.
But, in the end, it all comes down to fidelity. People who are polyamorous have agreements, those of us who are monogamous have agreements. Some like me are monogamous by default, others may have actually selected it.
But in the end, we are a loyalty-centric species, meaning we despise those who break faith with others. Homo sapiens, they call us, wise man. Probably not: most of us are fools more often than wise, and wisdom comes as a result of hard knocks as a result of folly.
But clearly we are homo fidelus, faithful man. You see little girls on here and elsewhere musing 'why do all men cheat?'
By 'all men', I presume they mean the statistical average of somewhere between 25 and 30% of men, and by cheating, we mean breaking the agreement made between the couple or whatever polyamorous people are called.
That is somewhere above a quarter, and less than a third. Even peple only educated in the humanities surely know that isn't remotely close to 'all'.
I haven't read the Ethical Slut, I'll grant you. I know it's popular, and it supports fidelity, in the context of the agreements people make.
It's clear, when you look at anthropology, instead of sites like salon.com, that fidelity is something all human societies value. Without it, we'd have lacked the cohesion to evolve. Even chimpanzees do it, bonobos do it, even the gang societies of baboons do it. In early societies, breaking faith would have meant ostracision, which would have been a death sentence in paleolithic times.
But that cannot be confused with what agreements are initially made, or what those parties do to amend said agreements.
So, you have a couple who marries and are monogamous, and later on agree to do whatever they call polyamory or an open relationship. That doesn't make them breaking faith, so long as they both agree to the terms and understand each other. That doesn't make her a slut or him a horn dog.
Or, you have a couple like myself and the Wife, who remain monogamous, and then years later, She asks I not go to Hooters with my friends. I have not ever been, but when they started being popular out here that is something of concern to Her. I am a western-raised male, and so mainly go along with what She wants in these matters, and it doesn't make a whipped man out of me because I agree to the amended terms, if you will, and after having agreed, remain faithful to it. Breaking faith in that context would not be cheating, as they call it, but nonetheless the amendment was made, if you will. I understood the context of Her concerns, and willfully agreed by promising not to go there.
The only difference is, the former situation would be frowned upon by many in the supermajority, perhaps some on here who need to defend the supermajority as though it were a frail thing. And the latter would be supported, if perhaps frowned upon by some young insecure males wanting to strut their stuff.
But in the end, both scenarios show fidelity to prearranged, and amended, agreements.
If you think this is silly, you have yet to do any serious contract negotiations and thumb through the endless amendments to contracts that we make in business all the time. And each of said amendments are signed by all consenting parties involved, and they are as binding as the original.
If you still think we are not as a species homo fidelus, ask yourself why then, do we condemn to death those guilty of high treason? And why do we have varying degrees of murder, but not varying degrees of betrayal?
We understand murders as crimes of passion, accidental reckless endangerment, premeditative, and otherwise. But for treacherous acts, we judge ourselves and others with a high standard, because none of us can live with betrayal.
People get confused though, when they look at other people's agreements, and judge something as betrayal that the parties involved do not judge so. A real judge, in a real court of law, looking at a business contract, looks through all the adendums and looks for real meaning and not just flighty emotions to determine what is and what isn't betrayal.
A lot of people throw the words cheating and betrayal around, but lack the moral character to judge based on the agreement made by the parties involved. Betrayal used to mean instant death, and sometimes still does.
I haven't read the book but I will say this:
Yes, it is our nature to branch out and play the field, as it were. However, it is also our nature to search for companionship. This is why humans tend to stick to a certain mate.
companionship is not strictly a monogamous desire. people who are polyamorous often want companionship, just like monogamists do. they believe it can be had amongst multiple people, though, rather than just one person.
leo, thanks for all you said; it's beyond refreshing to see that someone who identifies differently, still accepts that this is a way of life for some people.
I found it funny in an ironic way, that you mentioned the contract aspect, cause, even though you weren't directing it towards polyamory specifically, it can certainly be applied to it.
polyamorous people, like monogamous people, have busy lives. however, since they're involved with multiple partners, instead of just one partner, it's a given that a lot of time is put into scheduling things, whether it be scheduling time together, scheduling time for helping children with their homework, scheduling responsibilities of household chores for everyone, ETC.
also, leo, being called a slut doesn't have to be a dirogatory thing. society has conditioned us that it should be, but I, personally, don't see it that way.
I agree being sexually open is nothing less than a good thing. My own reticence to use the
word slut is a generational thing: because of the terrible ways that word was used, by
women and men, against women.
But naturally, i can do no less than support those courageous women who are reclaiming
and redefining the word. But I wonder if I used it, with no malicious intent, would I then
be acting sexist in the same way that using the n word would make me acting in a racist
manner. Or, perhaps, yet again as often happens in navigating these delicate areas, I find
myself hapless, ignorant.
leo, there will be people who, I'm sure, would consider your using the word slut a bad thing, just as there are people who, no matter how it's explained to them, or the countless stories that illustrate the commitment involved in non-monogamous relationships, will think polyamory is a horrible way to live.
you can't please everyone, but it's important to keep a dialogue going, nonetheless.
I'm bringing this up as a reference for people on the "How long before you expect" topic.
Hey, thanks.