Now I read posts that disturb me. Seems that poly is being used as a mantle of respectability to cover people wanting their cake and eat it too. Most poly seems like an open relationship because there is a primary relationship and then the partners get to date others that never become part of the primary relationship. That id nothing new. Back in my day women and men did that all the time but it was not called so nice a name.

I read where husbands come home and tell their wives that they met someone and want to be poly. If the wife expresses fears they are made to feel like they are foolish and not evolved. Husbands and wives do not want to stop seeing other lovers even though their partner is uncomfortable with their “poly” life. I often hear that poly is natural and monogamy is not. Peeing and poop wherever you have to be is natural too and yet we do not do that either. We should rise above our nature or else we are no better than animals.

To be honest, all the couples we knew with some form of open relationship, did not last more than a few years and to date we have yet to meet any poly people who come close to our longevity. It was almost a cliche that a spouse would leave their marriage for a new and more exciting lover. We lost all of our friends like that and thereafter only socialized with monogamous couples who believe in long term relationships and sexual fidelity. We viewed ourselves as a normal family except there were three of us instead of two.

I may be wrong but to me, a relationship where all partners have lovers outside and separate from all their other relationships is just not being exclusive if date, or an open relationship if married. I dated several women at time since I was 12 years old. Yes, I started off young. I even dated other women when married and we never called it poly, just an open relationship. Now anyone who wants a safety net in case a new relationship does not work out, calls it poly. The worse are wives who have lovers and use their husbands as a source of income and safety net. We have a good friend who has a lover from before her marriage and through it. She married a guy with the knowledge that she was going to use him for financial support and that is just want she did. The poor sap married a woman he never would otherwise have a shot with and so he agreed to her terms. She quit work, had lovers and in private would trash talk her husband and call him a sucker and yet, her husband accepted their relationship because she called it poly and more natural than monogamy. He bought it because his first had an affair and when he found out she left him for her lover. What he is not realizing is that all his “poly” relationship is doing is having him give his wife permission to cheat. Knowing what she is doing does not change the fact that she is sharing intimacy, tenderness and love with other men.

While it is certainly true that you can love more than one person, isn’t a relationship finding those in it to be “enough” for you to be happy and sexually fulfilled. If not, why are you even in that relationship at all. Having more than one relationship is stressful, logistically a nightmare and an emotional rollercoaster. Every minute you spend with one person is a minute you cannot spend with another.