Whatever You Do, Don't Mix Up Your Partners - -PageTurner- | FetLife. "But what if they test positive?" - Poly.Land. “But aren’t you worried about diseases?” It’s a very frequent question asked of poly people – and a very natural one. I know it’s the first one I asked when polyamory was presented to me as a relationship option. Your standard-issue Poly Honor Student answer goes a little something like this: “Of course we are, but we all practice safe sex and are regularly tested.”
But I’ll let you in on something that took me years to learn: It’s all quite a bit more complicated than that. Consider this: Everyone’s fairly webbed up and on a 6-month testing schedule. What happens now? Do the rules change? Who gets informed of the positive result? Is this the time when you whip that veto out of your back pocket and decide that this person can’t be your metamour anymore? Do you assume this person has been unfaithful, had contact they didn’t report? I have seen all of these things happen among the poly folk I’ve known.
The problem is that we haven’t defined an acceptable positive. I agreed. Confusing, yeah? Login | FetLife. Having Multiple Devoted Boyfriends Is Wonderful, Polyandrous Women Confirm. Many women may casually date multiple guys, but some modern-day women are practicing polyandry: having multiple husbands (or, in a contemporary, repurposed definition, several serious or life-long partners). Polyandry, the female-focused version of polygamy, is technically illegal in the United States; thus, those who practice it do so without literally getting married. "I would say [polyandry] is when a woman has many male partners," says Dr. Denise Renye, a San Francisco-based psychologist who specializes in sex and intimacy. Read more: How Dating Came to Suck So Much But that doesn't mean a woman can't dream of putting a ring on those many male partners. While some women like Jislaaik relish the chance to celebrate polyandry, other women in polyamorous communities view having multiple male partners as simply an inherent facet of the general polyamorous lifestyle.
Blue has multiple male partners herself and says more men offer more emotional support—not to mention the sexual benefits. Why I say “non-primary,” not “secondary” | SoloPoly. I’m a writer and editor by profession, so I choose words carefully. In this blog I deliberately refer to “non-primary” partners — rather than “secondary,” the more common term. First, let me define what I mean by non-primary: Non-primary relationship. An intimate (romantic/sexual) relationship that by mutual agreement does not have the traditional relationship escalator role or goal of becoming primary life partners (married or equivalent) who share a household. CAVEAT: As with all terms I define in this blog, this is my personal perspective. Why I draw this distinction between primary and non-primary Primary relationships (here: Earth) are important — and they get most of the attention in and out of the poly community.
In my view, whether a relationship is non-primary does not depend on the existence of other overlapping relationships. For instance, some people (especially many solos, including some monogamous ones) prefer only to have non-primary relationships. 1. 2. Like this: I Grew Up in a Polyamorous Household - VICE. Few cultural symbols have as much heft as the "traditional" nuclear family. You know the one: two heterosexual parents, two kids, one dog, two tablespoons of white picket fence, whisk gently. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that—it's just not how I was raised. My parents are polyamorous, a Greek/Latin mishmash word meaning romantic non-monogamy with the consent of everyone involved. As a kid, I lived with my dad, my mom, my mom's partner, and for a while, my mom's partner's partner. They first explained it to me when I was about eight. "Because I love him," Mom said, matter-of-factly.
"Well, that's good," my brother replied, "because I love him too. " It was never really any more complicated than that. I never resented my parents for hanging out with their partners. I do remember the first time James told me off. It's fortunate I was living in relative familial bliss at home, because school was a living nightmare. Most people tried to understand, but not everyone could. Login | FetLife. Going Poly — Some life lessons from 2016. - A brief overview of what a Unicorn can be in a... Finally Home — Polyamory can bring: immense joy and dizzying... Poly-Architecture 101: Building Hierarchies « Slut, Ph.D. It is one of the most often misunderstood truisms of hierarchical polyamory that stable and highly functioning primary relationships are essential for successful (hierarchical) poly life.
It’s not the truism itself that people misunderstand; it’s that most people misunderstand *why* you need a stable and highly functioning primary relationship for a successful hierarchical poly life. For the rest of this post, I’m going to rely on a metaphor of architecture and houses. In this metaphor, hierarchical polyamory tends to involve building a house with someone (your primary), and then coming up with ways to incorporate other partners (a guest bedroom; four guest bedrooms; a cottage in the back; a shed in the back; a dungeon in the basement… you get the idea).
Fact: You need a firm foundation so the house doesn’t fall down When most people think about the idea that you need a strong primary relationship for your poly life, they think that it’s only for this reason. Like this: Like Loading... Resources and Information on Polyamory and Non-Monogamy. Login - FetLife. Polyamory FAQ - More Than Two. Religious Attitudes Towards Polyamory.
Among organized religions, attitudes towards polyamory vary from extreme discomfort and distaste to complete acceptance. At one end of that spectrum, conservative or fundamentalist sects of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism abhor extra-marital sex and base family on a strident sexual exclusivity—for women. At the other end of the spectrum, Paganism and sacred sexuality of several varieties celebrate a multiplicity of gods and lovers. The more liberal and sex-positive a religion is, the more likely it will accept polyamorous relationships among its congregation. The Big Three in the United States—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—share the same theological foundations that mandate heterosexuality and marriage to create children. The sexual double standard that allows men far more latitude than women is deeply engrained in these religions, and society. google images Christianity Islam Generally Islamic beliefs are open to non-monogamous relationships, but only polygyny is acceptable.
Judaism. What’s a metamour? On my terms | SoloPoly. The “metamour” concept is like the vase in this picture. Don’t see the vase? Only see the faces? That’s the problem I’m talking about! “Metamour” is an especially weird bit of poly-speak. But still, I think it’s a surprisingly useful and important term… NOTE: This is one of a series of posts where I define how I’m using some key relationship terms in this blog.
Other people may use these terms in other ways, but I’m trying to be clear and consistent in this context. New words, even awkward or silly-sounding ones, make the most sense when you need to discuss something that isn’t supposed to exist (or at least, not be visible) in common society. In our culture, where monogamy is a dominant paradigm (as well as a strongly held and emotionally charged common assumption and value), you’re only supposed to have “serious” intimate relationships with one person at a time.
For polyamorous and open people, these word choices all suck. That’s where “metamour” becomes a handy word: “OMG! Like this: Nonmonogamy2.5.1.gif (GIF Image, 1600 × 1186 pixels) - Scaled (74%) Books: The Polyamory Handbook: A User's Guide (Paperback) by Peter J. Benson (Author) Matt Bullen: March 2012. Poly Party Weekend, June 15 - 17! Poly lessons I learned from cheating while monogamous. | atheist, polyamorous, skeptics. Posted by shaunphilly in Culture and Society, Polyamory. Tags: cheating, monogamy, relationships, trust trackback This post will be hard for me to write. It will be difficult because it involves mistakes I have made juxtaposed with ideas about love and polyamory that may come across as crass, cold, and possibly uncaring.
There will undoubtedly be people who read this that think of me as an asshole for the thoughts I will express below, but I think it’s worth exploring these ideas anyway. After all, it is such experiences which helped give me perspective on polyamory, and perhaps some people will sympathize or have experienced similar things. So, I have not always been polyamorous. Well, I suppose somewhere deep down, I have always been predisposed to polyamory, but I have not always practiced polyamory in my relationships.
So, after college I was monogamous, serially so anyway. I loved her. The cheating act, therefore, was not about lack of attention or satisfaction. But we were happy. Study looks at evolutionary origins of monogamous coupling. The roots of the modern family — monogamous coupling — lie somewhere in our distant evolutionary past, but scientists disagree on how it first evolved. A new study says we should thank two key players: weak males with inferior fighting chops and the females who opted to be faithful to them. These mating strategies may "have triggered a key step in the very long process of the evolution of the family," said study author Sergey Gavrilets, a biomathematician at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
"Without it, we wouldn't have the modern family. " The mating structure of humans is strikingly different than that of sexually promiscuous chimps, in which a few alpha males dominate other males in the group and, by dint of their superior fighting prowess, freely mate with the females. In addition, male chimps don't contribute to rearing their young — that is left to the female. Some scientists believe that ancestors of humans had chimp-like patterns of mating and child-rearing.