Polyamory

When I started this blog, this was a topic that I told myself just had to be written about, but I got distracted. Never mind, here I am now.

Polyamory. For those of you who don't know, polyamory is "the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved."





The reason I want to write about this topic is because my boyfriend is polyamorous. Polyamory seems to get some bad press when I've seen other people talking about it on the internet, which is why I want to try and dismiss the myth and tell you all what it's really all about and what it's like to be like it, or be with someone who lives like it.

I've had many an argument with my sister over the topic. I love a good debate, and polyamory used to be the number one topic I used to bring up whenever the mood took me. I have a video of one such debate tucked away somewhere.

Her basic points were these: When you truly love someone, you should want to be with them and nobody else. When you love someone else, they are enough.

I tried to argue back, but her argument at the time was that I'd never had a boyfriend so I couldn't possibly know what it was really like. And at the time, she had a point.

However, what neither of us anticipated was the fact that a little bit later on in my life, the guy who made me aware of polyamory in the first place was going to become my first ever boyfriend. My sister had anticipated that once I got a boyfriend I'd completely change my mind about the poly thing, but I didn't.

That's not to say that I completely agree with polyamory 100% of the time, but that's what I'm here to write about.

I'd like to dispel the idea that polyamory is cheating, because it isn't. Polyamory has to be consensual - all people involved have to know and agree. Therefore, it's not cheating because it's not breaking the rules.

But why would anyone want to be poly? As my sister said, when you love someone, they should be all you want, right? Not necessarily. Nobody is perfect. Some people are better for some things than others. Having multiple partners gets you a more well-rounded experience, you can have more of what you want, even if it means getting it from more than one person. Is it selfish? Perhaps, but is it more selfish than wanting to keep one person all to yourself? Despite knowing that you can't give them everything they want? I'll leave you to decide on that one.

So, polyamory and me. My boyfriend is poly. I won't lie and say I'm 100% happy about it because I'm not (although I have become more and more accepting of it as time has gone on), but I can live with it. I knew my boyfriend was poly before we started going out, so I feel it would be wrong of me to complain about it when I knew beforehand. Of course, that's not to say I can't voice my concerns about it, which I have done and is what has led me to become okay about it.

The key to holding successful relationships with polyamory involved is communication. I'm a relatively strong person emotionally (hormones screw me up sometimes, but other than that I'm strong) but it still makes me a little insecure. It's not for the faint-hearted, relationship-wise. It all has to be consensual or else it's just cheating. It's important early on to tell your partner about it. If you both feel strongly about it for and against, then both partners need to assess themselves. Can the polyamorous partner bear to be monogamous? Does the love for the partner overcome the need for polyamory? On the flip side of the coin, can the monogamous partner live with their partner being poly? If the answers to these questions conflict, then you need to assess whether you can really be a couple.

Me and my boyfriend have had such a talk, and I felt so much better after. I was obviously aware of him being poly and we'd spoken about it, but I needed a bit more clarification on it. It basically came down to this: We both love each other hugely and would do anything for each other. However, I would prefer that my boyfriend wasn't polyamorous. He, on the other hand, feels quite strongly that he remains that way. He has told me, and it gave me a feeling of incredible security, that if I told him I wanted him to stop then he would. I'm more important to him than being poly, but right now, given his strong feelings about it, I don't feel the need to make him stop. So far, in the year and a half we've been together, he's yet to have another girlfriend, and I've never felt the need to forbid it in case I get jealous. If I knew I'd get jealous, I might be more inclined to say no to it, but I'm not convinced and seeing as he's happier about himself that way, then I might as well let him. Basically, his love for me is stronger than his need for to be poly, but my love for him and my want for him to be happy is stronger than my desire for him to be monogamous. I can't say that I wouldn't be completely without emotion if he did get another girlfriend, but so far hoping that he never does has been working well enough. I'll reassess the situation if it ever comes up.

There is a perhaps obvious question that this issue brings up, perhaps more obvious to the more insecure among you. What's to say that he won't find another girlfriend he loves more than me? How do I know that won't happen, I try to forbid it and then he turns around and says bye? The fact is, I don't. I just have to trust him and trust that he won't. There's an awful lot of back story between us that I may or may not have written about earlier, so I have a lot of faith in the fact that he truly loves me and I'm 'The One' for him. Of course, him loving someone else more than me is never completely impossible, as much as anyone claims it is or how romantic it feels. You can never know what the future holds. I'm not insecure enough to worry about it now though. I'll worry about it in the unlikely event that it happens.

The other thing polyamory hangs on is agreement and compromise. What polyamory should never be is 'I'm poly, deal with it!' If my boyfriend said that to me, I'd have to turn around and say 'Erm, no'. Hell, nothing in any relationship should be about one partner doing what they want and screw the feelings of the other. Me and my boyfriend do have agreements in this area. If anything happens with another girl, I want to know immediately. Partly because I'd be happier that way, partly because if I did start getting bad emotions, I could put a stop to whatever was happening before it gets too involved. If I let it continue, I may or may not want to know everything that went on between them. I'd have to decide at the time. If I found that he did have another girlfriend on the go and he didn't tell me, I'd consider it a serious betrayal of trust and I'd have to seriously consider whether I could continue my relationship with him. My two further points, which I'm not sure if we've discussed (but he'll be reading this so he'll know now!) are those which I'd worry about when the time comes. If he had another girlfriend and he wanted sex to get involved, I'd insist on her getting an STI test before anything could happen. I'd be seriously pissed if I caught an STI from him because he caught it from her, after I'd been gracious enough to let him do it with another girl. The second point is that when he makes the move from boyfriend to fiancé, the polyamorism stops, or at least gets renegotiated. I'm pretty sure he'd agree to that.

The interesting thing about all of this is where this leaves me in terms of other partners. My boyfriend has bestowed upon me all the same benefits he gets. It would be hypocritical of him to expect me to allow him multiple partners but forbid me from doing the same. I wouldn't class myself as polyamorist, but I do enjoy these benefits. I love being able to perv on other people without there being jealousy involved! I am so incredibly grateful for my boyfriend and the way he is. In some ways he's an awful first boyfriend, because if we ever broke up I'd never be able to find anyone else who was up to that high standard. I think I'd have to be single for the rest of my life. It's not just to do with the polyamory either, it's everything.

I don't properly consider myself polyamorist because I don't feel the need for another boyfriend. Not like my sister said, because I love him so much, I don't need anyone else. I feel that he gives me everything I need, so I don't need anyone else. If he didn't, I might consider it, although I think I'd have to subscribe to his heirarchy thing he's got going on. Polyamory is not like the polygamy you've heard of, especially in the religions where you're supposed to treat each of your partners the same. My boyfriend has primaries and secondaries, and that's what I'd do too. Some people might try to have more than one primary, but my boyfriend says it's impractical to do in reality. So, you'd have one main boyfriend/girlfriend, and then you'd have one or more other partners, more like friends with benefits. He may have made mention of tertiaries, but I can't really remember now. As long as I'm firmly positioned in the only primary spot, then I'm good! Any partners I had other than my current boyfriend would be secondaries. Additions rather than alternatives.

I don't want another boyfriend, but I can't say that I'll never want another boyfriend. I never say never now. I once said I'd never put a cock in my mouth, and look at me now. If not for that reason, I'd say I was almost monogamous, but my bisexuality is thrown into the mix. I don't want another boyfriend, but a female secondary would be nice. I'd almost go as far to say I could handle two primaries, my boyfriend and then one girlfriend, but women are insane (I know because I am one! I couldn't handle a relationship with myself or anyone who thinks similarly) and I just don't want a proper relationship with a woman. A female fuck buddy would be very nice, and I appreciate my boyfriend being polyamorist and open. I felt no embarrassment or guilt over the admission that actually, if the opportunity arose, I wouldn't mind a 'girlfriend', and it was a joy to know that. It feeds into the idea that you get what you need from more than one person. I feel I get everything I need from a man from my man, but there are some things I would like if I could have them that men just can't do, either by inclination or anatomy. I still don't consider myself properly polyamorist though. I don't know if there's a word for having only two partners (biamory perhaps? I'll Google it later), but for me there would only ever be one man and one woman for me at a time.

It does feel strange that the model of polyamory I subscribe to isn't the same as the one my boyfriend does, but it comes from me being bisexual. He's straight. He's a man, and there's things he just can't do because of that, hence why I'd want a girlfriend on the side. On the other hand, him having other girls, there's nothing they could do that I absolutely couldn't. Why the need? As I said earlier, agreeing to disagree and hoping nothing ever comes of it has been working okay so far, I'll hope that that continues. I don't consider it burying my head in the sand, it's just worrying about things and dealing with the possible self-esteem issues when they happen. If it did happen, I trust my boyfriend enough to know that he'd follow my wishes, whatever they turned out to be.

A long, serious blog post there. I'll leave you with a little fantasy I've just had. Imagine how awesome it would be if my boyfriend found another girlfriend who was bisexual, and it turned out me and her liked each other too. It would be like a three-way relationship. Oh, the fun we could have...